Kaylee Frye: Not to be negative — but don't the hospital need that medicine?
Zoe Washburne: Government-run facility. They'd have it restocked in a matter of hours.
Dr. Simon Tam: She's right. They'll never miss it.
Zoe Washburne: Government-run facility. They'd have it restocked in a matter of hours.
Dr. Simon Tam: She's right. They'll never miss it.
Some people tend to be less sympathetic towards victims of robbery and/or mooching if the victim is wealthy, with the justification being that they can afford the loss. As a result, some people who are thieves and/or moochers will use this justification when targeting someone who they know is rich. While some people who use this justification genuinely believe it and practice what they preach, for others, it's more of a convenient excuse for stealing, not paying back money, or exploiting someone's generosity. Some people who use this excuse will even go so far as to claim that the people who complain about being stolen and/or mooched off of are selfish for not "sharing" their wealth with the less fortunate.
There are a number of situations in which people like to use this excuse; someone who steals a rich person's credit card and racks up a huge bill might use the excuse that it's fine since the person can afford it. If a wealthy person invites someone out to a restaurant, a gluttonous person will try to justify their behavior by claiming that they can afford it. A parent might try to justify stealing or mooching off of someone without kids by claiming that having no kids means they should have more money to spare.
Unlike some characters who steal from the wealthy, characters with this mindset are rarely ever sympathetic because their thefts are a result of greed and selfishness rather than necessity or retaliation against wrongdoing. In addition, unlike most wealthy victims of theft or exploitation, the victims of characters with this mindset are portrayed sympathetically because they haven't genuinely wronged anyone.
Compare Eat the Rich (the kind of person who would dehumanize rich people). Also compare See also Never Win the Lottery when the now-rich character's friends and family start asking for money (or others simply target the character for theft). Contrast Caper Rationalization and Just Like Robin Hood, where characters steal for benign reasons, as well as Karmic Thief, where the narrative portrays the one being robbed as deserving it.
Someone who's The Thing That Would Not Leave might use this justification if the person they're bumming off of is wealthy.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love You: Played with in Chapter 147; Hahari offers to let Tama stay at her mansion, a development that she mentions the readers expected, as Hahari is an absurdly wealthy cuteness fetishist and Tama is a Lazy Bum who wants to live life as a cat. At first, the situation seems to work out swimmingly, but after a while, Tama becomes racked with guilt over lazing around while all the other girls are working or studying, and so Hahari leaves her on the street, but not without leaving Tama a flyer for a job posting at one of her companies.
- Negima!: When the other girls learn how obscenely rich their classmate Ayaka is, one of the girls suggests that they should make it a point to make Ayaka their friend, with Yue chiming in, "Even if we have to force her."
Comic Books
- Archie Comics: Big Eater Jughead goes to billionaire Mr. Lodge's house, thinking Archie is there visiting Veronica. He's not, so he heads over to the kitchen to fix himself a (large) sandwich, completely without permission. When Lodge confronts Jughead about this not being a free lunch counter, we get this exchange:
Jughead: With all your money, what's one little sandwich?Mr. Lodge: (grabs the sandwich away) That happens to be why I have money. (then summons butler to literally kick Jug out of the house.)
- Infinite Crisis: In Countdown to Infinite Crisis, Blue Beetle mentions that his buddy, Booster Gold, has been "borrowing" large amounts of his money for years, on the justification that Ted has Kord Industries while Booster can't even get a credit card because his social security number is from the 26th century. Ted put up with this for years, but is forced to confront Booster about it when Kord Industries is suddenly hit with financial troubles.
Fan Works
- The Apprentice, the Student, and the Charlatan: Nova Shine, scion of the extremely rich and influential Novus family, steals a hefty sum from his own family's vaults as he runs away following an incident, using this as a justification since he mentions it was like a drop in the ocean. Princesses Celestia and Cadance intervene, but only to put the money away so that he can learn to work to keep himself afloat until that money is released to him when he comes of age. Later on in life, he does not seem to be proud of stealing from his own family, but still believes it was necessary.
- Windows of the Soul: Referenced in a joking manner by Natsuki; knowing that Shizuru's father, Shinri, thinks of her as a useless hanger-on and a nasty Social Climber, Natsuki teasingly says Shizuru will probably graduate from business school and throw herself into doing the sorts of things to "turn money into more money", instead of "buy [Natsuki] houses and cars like a good girl". She's careful never to make such jokes in Shinri's presence, and Shinri changes his opinion of Natsuki after she takes a knife to the thigh, saving Shizuru from an assassin.
Shinri: Hangers-on and other useless people don't generally throw themselves at armed assailants. Her calibre is higher than that, at least.
Films — Live-Action
- In 2 Fast 2 Furious, Brian and Roman meet with Carter Verone to discuss the job they've just been hired for. When the meeting adjourns, Carter stops Roman from leaving because he knows that Roman stole his cigar cutter and asks for it back. When Brian calls him out on this, Roman says he didn't think Carter would miss it since he must have a lot of them.
- The Dark Knight Rises: This film's incarnation of Catwoman robs the rich not for any altruistic motives, but because their stuff is simply worth more.
- In Edward Scissorhands, Jim says that stealing from his parents won't be bad because they have high-quality insurance.
- Inside Man: Dalton freely admits in his Internal Monologue that his motives for robbing the bank are in no way altruistic—"I did it for the money"—but he specifically targeted the secret safe deposit box of the bank's owner Arthur Case, a wealthy Nazi collaborator, and left the customers' money alone. As he puts it, "it's not worth much if you can't face yourself in the mirror."
- Parasite (2019): The plot revolves around how the destitute Kim family con their way into the lives of the privileged Park family by replacing their existing house staff, all in the hopes of getting their patronage and maybe marrying into them. The Kims, and especially Chung-sook, make it clear that they don't really feel guilt over their fraud since the Parks are rich enough to take it, and are painfully oblivious as to real world problems.
Literature
- Dilbert And The Way Of The Weasel: A reader letter to Scott Adams relates an anecdote where the author walked into the ladies' room at work to find a woman from another department pocketing the nice brand of lotion from the counter, on the grounds that "this place can afford it." When told that the women of the department had pooled their money to buy the stuff because the company-provided lavatory supplies are terrible, she replied, "Oh, well, I'm sure they all make more than I do," and left without further discussion.
- Jumper (1992): Early in the book, David sets himself up for life by using his teleportation power to rob a large bank's vault. When he explains this later to his Love Interest Millie, he argues that he stole less money than that bank loses every day on loan defaults.
- In A Song of Ice and Fire's backstory, Houses Reyne and Tarbeck did this to their nominal liege lord, Tytos Lannister. Tytos was a weak lord who thought he could make friends in Westeros' cutthroat politics by catering to his bannermen and throwing his money around, and the Reynes and Tarbecks abused this to get massive loans they had no interest in repaying. His son, Tywin, was right in that all he really got was getting mocked and cheated behind his back. The problem is that the lesson he took from the whole thing was thinking that it was better to be feared than respected.
Live-Action TV
- Better Call Saul:
- In "Something Beautiful", James McGill justifies his plan to steal a very valuable Hummel figurine by claiming that Neff Copiers, the owner, wouldn't even notice it being replaced by a knock-off figure.
- In "Breaking Bad", Gene/Saul learns that Buddy stopped short of stealing Mr. Lingk's financial data after he found out he was taking medication for cancer. Gene/Saul initially refers to Walter White's stage 3 cancer diagnosis and the fact that he ended up rich before dying, then furthermore mentions that most of the victims in their scheme have some sob story attached.
- Bones: Deconstructed. In Season 9, Camille Saroyan, who has a prominent role at the Jeffersonian Institution, has her identity stolen by someone making extravagant purchases with her credit cards, ruining her credit and causing a lot of grief. When the thief is discovered to be Cam's college roommate and friend Haley, Cam, horrified, asks how her friend could do something like that. It becomes apparent Haley was jealous of Cam and had let that fester into hatred, and her using this trope as justification was misplaced.
Haley: I asked you for a loan. You're clearly doing well, but you couldn't be bothered.Cam: I don't know what kind of money you think I have, but I'm on a government salary. I have a daughter in college.Haley: I didn't have a job.Cam: The money you stole, the credit you used? You bought expensive clothes, took a vacation, bought a $5,000 watch... You wanted me to give you money for that?
- The Dropout: Though Elizabeth Holmes is by no means poor, her family is fairly wealthy, she nonetheless exploits the wealth of others to maintain her company of Theranos Labs, by tricking investors into believing her blood sample device, the Edison Machine, can tell all that is needed to know from a single drop of blood. Unfortunately, the device Elizabeth Holmes is looking to create is a decade away at least from being feasible but she refuses to give up on her ambition, leading her to scam millions from investors, many of them wealthy, just to maintain the illusion that her idea with the Edison Machine can change the medical technology field. What makes this different is that Elizabeth refuses to believe she did anything wrong when everything she built falls apart when her lies are exposed, only believing that she "failed" with her idea and that the world wasn't ready for her device. Even after being arrested and facing serious charges of fraud, Elizabeth Holmes never saw anything wrong in "convincing" people to invest in her idea.
- Firefly: In "Ariel", Simon proposes to burgle the drug vault of a major Core World hospital, intending to fence the stolen medicine in the impoverished outer planets. Kaylee questions the morality of robbing a hospital, but Zoe and Simon—an M.D. who used to work in a similar hospital—both say that a major government-run hospital would get restocked quickly enough they'd never miss it.
- Gilmore Girls: Logan Hunzberger, despite being rich himself, likes to steal knick-knacks from other rich people's homes and replace them with an object stolen from the last target, as part of a Life and Death Brigade stunt. He justifies that he's been doing this for ages without anyone noticing because rich people have more stuff than they can keep track of. Backfired when Emily Gilmore notices her antique sewing box has been replaced and blames her maid, with Lorelai, who noticed the theft, demanding Logan give it back.
- Inventing Anna: Anna Delvey bounces from wealthy benefactor to wealthy benefactor, keeping up the ruse of being a wealthy heiress who just doesn't have access to her wealth at the moment, managing to mooch for different lengths of time depending on how observant they are. Her ultimate plan is to set up a foundation for the arts to provide herself with a steady income, rationalizing it with the amount of money she has seen flow among the rich, where her scheme would just be one more cog in the same machine.
- Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: The episode "Exile" has a homeless woman seemingly raped by a businessman, who claims that after they had consensual sex, which he paid for, she tried to steal his cash and he fought her off. When backed into a corner, the woman admits he was telling the truth and tried to justify her attempted theft by saying, "What's a few more dollars to someone like him?"
- My Wife and Kids: Junior ends up hanging with some kids from school who are only doing so because they like hanging out at his nice house. Micheal spells it out for Junior that this is the case, but he's unwilling to ditch them because he wants to be part of the clique, until one of them asks him to hook him up with Claire, which prompts him to put his foot down with the freeloaders.
- One Piece (2023): In "Tell No Tales", Nami decides to loot Kaya's mansion, justifying her actions by claiming that Kaya has so many possessions that she won't miss a few. Though she changes her mind after Kaya shows her nothing but kindness.
- Two and a Half Men: Alan Harper is this trope incarnate. After being kicked out by his wife and forced to live at his older brother's beach house, Alan quickly began to take advantage of his brother's home and wealth without having to earn it himself. Granted, it doesn't help that Alan is a complete cheapskate and practically the universe's Butt-Monkey, meaning whatever success Alan does achieve, it never lasts. It likewise doesn't take long for Charlie to grow annoyed and aggravated with Alan leeching off of him, often making obvious hints and direct suggestions for Alan to get a place of his own. In fact, Alan is basically this to everyone, from his mother to friends which naturally leads them to be rather annoyed with Alan and avoid giving him any form of financial support for they know he will take advantage of it and won't likely return it. Even after Charlie dies and his beach house is sold off, Alan still manages to worm and grovel his way back in after convincing the new owner, Walden.
- You Rang, M'Lord?: Stokes, the Meldrum's butler, is always drinking Lord Meldrum's finest wines and smoking his best cigars behind his back. Their footman, Twelvetrees, is disgusted by Stokes' behaviour, but Stokes justifies it by reminding Twelvetrees how Lord Meldrum's money could be better used by those who need it and instead is wasted on decadence.
Tabletop Games
- Spirit of the Century: The "Sucker" and "Big Sucker" stunts — nominally linked to the Deceit skill — are very much about this, giving the character who takes them an NPC companion who's at least decently well off (or outright loaded, especially with the upgraded version) and willing to use their money on the main character's behalf in addition to what other uses they may also have as part of the regular companion rules. On the downside, as reflected in the stunts' names, this NPC is also somewhat prone to being conned by others.
Theatre
- The Sound of Music: Max Detweiler is a friend of Captain Von Trapp's who makes it no secret that he likes him in part for his money.
Max: I like rich people. I like the way they live. I like the way I live when I'm with them.
Video Games
- DEATHLOOP: Little Harriet Morse had two loving parents who died in a horrible plane crash that she barely survived. After their passing, a woman named Elanor took Harriet as her ward, and encouraged Harriet to enter academia, spend her time learning in libraries and travel the world to broaden her knowledge—so Harriet wouldn't notice her embezzling the Morse family fortune away. The sudden and violent loss of her blood family, combined with the betrayal of her adopted mother (whom Harriet still regards as her second mother) is likely the Freudian Excuse behind her development of the Two-Path Divinity, a philosophy which espouses that the self is paramount.
- Hogwarts Legacy: Garreth Weasley asks the player to steal Billywig stings from Honeydukes. When pressed, Garreth replies that Honeydukes wouldn't notice this theft and that they can afford this.
- Honkai: Star Rail: In her trailer, Topaz shows up at the Herta space station to collect Herta's absolutely monumental debt to the IPC. Despite the rather horrifying chart Topaz shows her, Herta appears unfazed by the number and claims it's not very much money… for Asta. She then speeds away, leaving Asta to reluctantly pay the bill.
- Thief: Garrett is open about thieving being a way to make money, and he targets the rich because they have much more to steal. That said, he's disdainful of the nobility and is implied to have some schadenfreude at showing them up.
Web Animation
- Etra chan saw it!:
- After Akane gets caught stealing vegetables from her former father-in-law Katsura
, she tries to justify herself by the fact that her current husband makes less money than Katsura's son, alongside the fact that Katsura owns plenty of land and receives a pension. She even calls Katsura stingy for getting angry at her. No one buys her logic, not even her husband, who divorces Akane for her crimes.
- After Azami attempted to steal Yuri's credit card from the trash, she finds that she can't use it because it's cut up, and demands the rest of the pieces. When Yuri points out that using someone else's credit card is illegal, Azami says it's fine because Yuri and her husband have plenty of money.
- After Akane gets caught stealing vegetables from her former father-in-law Katsura
- Helluva Boss: When Blitzo was a child, his father Cash rented him out to King Paimon as a playmate to Paimon's son, Stolas. Cash's main motive was for Blitzo to gain access to the palace and rob "those rich fucks" of anything worth taking. To make Cash even less sympathetic, he used blatant manipulation and guilt-tripping to get Blitzo on-board with his plan.
- SparkTales: Lisa's evil older sister Kayo always stole from Lisa ever since they were kids. One day, Kayo steals Lisa's credit card and spends two million yen. When Lisa calls her out for this, Kayo tries to justify it by claiming that since Lisa is married and also makes her own money, she can easily afford it. Neither Lisa, Lisa's husband Noah, nor Lisa and Koya's parents buy it, and rightfully call her out as a thieving parasite.
Web Video
- Apple Girl: Erin tricked her ex-stepmother, the OP, into giving her five-thousand dollars by lying that her dad needed surgery. After Erin gets called out on it, Erin tries to defend herself with the fact that OP has plenty of money.
- Text Theater: After Suzie stole Lisa's car to go on a camping trip, Lisa is naturally angry and demands that Suzie return it. When Lisa states that she needs her car in order to visit her grandparents, Suzie claims that if Lisa can afford a big car, then she can buy a rent-a-car to visit her grandparents, despite scoffing at Lisa's earlier suggestion that she get a rent-a-car to go camping.
Western Animation
- DuckTales (2017): Louie attempts to do this with Uncle Scrooge's wealth multiple times, but since Scrooge is a cheap miser who values hard work, he’s irked by Louie’s attempts at being a leech and never lets Louie get away with it. In particular, in "The Great Dime Chase!", Louie justifies that he doesn't have to get up and charge his phone — he can just buy a new phone with Scrooge's money. Scrooge is not amused.
- Gravity Falls: A variation; in "The Golf War," when Dipper and Mabel discover the Lilliputtians who control the mini golf course, Dipper suggests Mabel use them to win against her rival, Pacifica Northwest, at mini golf. Dipper's justification:
Mabel: I’m not sure, Dipper. I wanna beat Pacifica, but doesn't this seem like...cheating?Dipper: Pacifica's rich, Mabel. She's cheating at life.
- One episode of The Simpsons sees Homer Simpson tricking Mr. Burns into funding his bowling team while the latter is doped up on ether. He justifies his exploitation by reasoning that a billionaire like Mr. Burns will never even notice the missing five hundred dollars from his account. Naturally, this assumption turns out to be false, and Homer is forced to let Burns join his team, despite his lack of physical prowess.
Real Life
- More often than not when someone wins a huge cash prize like a lottery, close friends and relatives will mooch off the winner for everything they can. Though most people forget that despite the huge amount of money, it’s still finite and will run out sooner or later if not properly dealt with.