Is it possible to say "The richer cry even more"? (vs. "The rich also cry")

There's a very old TV show called 'The rich also cry'.

I understand that the subject ('the rich') here acts as a noun, although it was originally an adjective (rich).

I wonder how many residual properties of an adjective are retained once it has been converted into a noun. For example, there's no sign of the plural (the ending -s), which is typical of adjectives, but less so of nouns.

Is it possible to use the comparative degree to create a 'comparative noun'?

• rich -> richer
• the rich (people) -> the richer people -> just 'the richer' (without 'people' following it)

Thanks for reading.

Solution 1:

When an adjective is used to represent a group of people, such as the sick, the poor, the blind, the young, the unemployed, the elite, or the damned, the noun phrase conveys an almost absolute quality and a general meaning; it is used to refer to all the sick people, all the poor, all the young, etc.

The comparative noun form, the richer, works if the subject being compared, in this case the rich, has been mentioned previously or is clearly understood from context.

The rich cry but the richer cry even more.

There is a very well-known aphorism which says

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer

but here richer is an adjective; therefore the definite article is not required.

Furthermore, without context, I'm not sure how the following sentence would fare

The younger face even greater challenges in the world of work.

It's understandable, but the comparative noun phrase version doesn't sound idiomatic, it's not something that we hear, the reader would have to fill in the missing context. A better alternative would be

The younger the unemployed, the greater the challenges they face

Here the comparative form “the younger” is used to head the noun phrase “the unemployed”, it modifies the generic meaning of all the unemployed people

Solution 2:

The sentence is perfectly grammatical, but absent the context of "the rich also cry" it sounds a bit strange. A couple of thoughts:

• The word "richer" used in the sense of more wealth (rather than e.g. more flavor) is relatively uncommon, with a significant exception being "the rich get richer." I would not say "Mickey is richer than Gus" -- it sounds a bit childish and crass somehow.

• "The rich" is already being used as a comparative -- it means people who are richer (though again, I would prefer to say something like "wealthier") than some others. "The richer" doesn't clearly denote a group of people, so as a collective noun it doesn't really stand on its own.

But this is not the only part of the sentence that is a reference to "the rich also cry"; without that context, what "even more" refers to is not clear. So in summary: this makes sense closely following "the rich also cry" and to people who can be counted on to be very familiar with that phrase (for what it's worth, I hadn't heard it before), but otherwise will be a bit strange/confusing.