Monthly tugboat

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK! The contents of this page have been bought with taxpayer money!

“	Yet AGAIN I am waiting for my next tugboat from my Social before I can even pay a Website to Host me and grant me a better .com domain name than sonichu.com	”
Chris to Miyamoto, complaining about how long his free money is taking

What Chris believes a monthly tugboat is. Your tax dollars at work, gentlemen.

The monthly tugboat is Chris's euphemism for his Social Security Disability Insurance check, which is deposited into his bank account via direct deposit on or about the 3rd of each month. Essentially, the United States government has a taxpayer-funded program to financially support disabled individuals whose injuries or ailments affect their ability to earn a living wage. Contrary to popular belief, Chris's check isn't a need-based welfare check, nor is it meant to replace a paycheck for someone who is unable to work. Chris's disability check is meant to supplement the money he would receive at a low-paying job (the best he could hold down) and provide him enough money to live on his own. Chris, of course, chooses not to work and mooches off his parents instead, blowing his tugboat on video games. Unfortunately, this doesn't disqualify him from receiving disability.

Currently, Chris receives $809 each month with $565 going to his parents for room, board, and to pay toward his credit card debt. The rest of it generally goes towards video games or straight up his ass. However, $244 per month (about $8 per day) is nowhere near enough to satisfy Chris's need for games, porn, PlayStation Network downloads, a constant supply of Chicken McNuggets, gallons of Coke, and, since the summer of 2009, alcohol. As of January 2010, he owed roughly $3,500 in credit-card debt, some on cards of his own and some on cards he stole from his parents. Indeed, according to one of his bank statements, at the end of one month he had less than three dollars left in his account. Even more, just by straight spending and no other extra income, he put himself $452.57 USD in the red.

Challenged by a correspondent in the Mailbag, Chris claimed that he is not wasting his taxpayer-funded "tugboat", because he is putting that money back into the economy and indirectly paying the tugboats of others. According to Chris's logic, by purchasing useless commercial goods, he is paying sales tax which the government puts directly back into the hands of the needy. This is a tremendous leap of faulty rationalization, even for Chris, and he fails to elaborate on his shaky economic theories in any detail. If you thought he didn't understand money before, you ain't seen nothing yet.

This is true

On the advice of his father, Chris doesn't get a job, supposedly because the tugboat gives him more money overall. However, Bob is totally wrong. At the time of this writing, minimum wage in the state of Virginia is $7.25, pursuant to federal minimum wage. If Chris were to somehow do a complete 180° on his life, get off disability, and begin working a full 40-hour week, his monthly income before taxes and his rent payment would be approximately $1,260 USD. This would put Chris's annual income range, before tax, at roughly $15,100. Subtracting what he pays his parents to live in filth each month, as well as the 5% tax his income range mandates in the state of Virginia, Chris could very likely be left with a ridiculous $9,000 in spending money, enough for many more sex toys and video games. Contrast this with the $4,200 Chris pulls in annually from the government after paying off his parents (roughly equal to what he's spent in total so far on his PS3).

Even if this weren't enough, the most cursory research reveals that an SSDI beneficiary could have earned from $700 dollars a month in the year 2000, when Chris was 18, to $1,000 dollars a month in 2010 without losing a cent of their SSDI payments. It's clear that Bob's decision to encourage Chris's unemployment comes from negligence, ignorance, blind delusion, or the knowledge that his son is a total failure who can bring nothing but shame on himself and his family. His enabling has caused Chris to miss out on over $100,000 in potential earnings through the end of 2010, which could buy a lot of bras, fake china, children's toys, and Lego-covered PS3 accessories.

If Bob's motivation comes from the reasonable assumption that Chris could never survive in an real-world workplace environment, of course, one wonders why he keeps unleashing him to run amok on an unsuspecting public.

In the father call, Chris claims that his disability check is "a stepping-stone in the right direction of [him] moving out". Given Chris's tendency to waste his free money on frivolous shit rather than put it towards anything that might improve his life, he was probably just telling Kacey's father what he thought he wanted to hear.

Rough calculations and estimations say that if Chris lives into his eighties, given reasonable "cost of living" increases to his tugboat annually, he will receive roughly $900,000 to $1,000,000 over his lifetime. In this day and age, that's chump change and he'd amass a larger fortune if he simply got off his ass and got a career; of course, it's extremely unlikely that his fat ass will live anywhere near that long.

References by Chris

• The earliest known use of the term "monthly tugboat" was in March 2007 in Chris's first e-mail to his half-brother Cole Smithey. When introducing himself, Chris says, "I'm getting by livin' with my folks and a monthly tugboat." He does not actually explain what a "monthly tugboat" is supposed to be.
• An e-mail to Megan from August 2007 recounts Chris's purchase of Guitar Hero with his latest tugboat check.
• During the Miyamoto Saga, Chris claimed he was waiting for his tugboat (in an e-mail to "Miyamoto" himself, no less) to fix technical problems with his website.
• In Mumble 1, Chris mentions that he'll have to wait for his next tugboat to buy some new content for Ape Escape on the PSP.
• In BlueSpike PSN Chat 4, Chris tells Julie that he can't make it to Ohio until his next tugboat comes in.
• Since late 2009, Chris seems to have mostly given up the term "tugboat," possibly because of its extensive adoption by trolls in the Mumble chats, the Mailbag, and elsewhere. In the Father Call he refers to it as his "monthly income," while in the Jackie e-mails he simply says he's on Social Security, although he did refer to it once as a "tugboat" in Mailbag 34.
• The BlueSpike Skype logs shine a light on the origin of the term:

“	it's a fun story. anyway, you know the expression, "Our ship has come in," well that refers to a HUGE one-time amout of money, which can compare to a Luxury Ship that can easily sink. and a Tugboat is more reliable, because even though it's smaller, it's built tougher, and it's usually better on time in that sense. so, I refer to my monthly income as a Tugboat, whereas I would refer to say winning the Lottery as a Luxary Ship. Chalk that idea up to a spot of creative thinking.  :)	”
Chris, demonstrating mastery of metaphor and analogy

See also

• Autism
• Chris and money