Neville,
You wrote: “Semantics. The tax burden just gets shifted to the middle/lower classes. Same thing as taking their money and giving it away; it just sounds better on the surface.”
“‘conservatives understand that money belongs to the one who earned it liberals feel all money belongs to the government’
No liberal in the history of this country has ever claimed to believe that or said anything even close to it. There are virtually infinitely many options to chose from if you want to criticize liberals, you don’t need to go making up your own.”
Those two statements are contradictory. The only way one can view the difference between the government giving me someone else’s money (that they took by force) and the government letting me keep more of my own money as semantic is if one believes that the government is entitled to all of everyone’s money.
If the government is not entitled to all income, then a tax break is: the government stealing from me less. A subsidy is: the government stealing from someone else to give me money.
If, on the other hand, government is entitled to take 100% of your income, there is no practical difference between a subsidy and a tax break.