This is an attitude I recommend you adopt toward people who disagree with you. If you accept that we genuinely can't see how a 14% tax is a subsidy even though it's apparently painfully obvious to you that it is one, and you assume the reason we can't see it is because we're irrational victims of some communicable delusion, then, (although you will be utterly and completely wrong about that since the actual reason, obviously, is that we're right and you're wrong,) you will still be far closer to the truth than you will be if you instead assume, as the authors of the Bible assumed, that everyone who expresses disbelief in your ridiculous doctrines actually deep down believes in your religion and knows you're right and is just being a dick about admitting it.
We've already been over this, although admittedly not in this thread. The reason why there is such a gap in understanding here is that no matter what conditions or explanations people provide, you remain wedded to a single definition of subsidy - a net overall cash flow from the government to the individual or company. Most people here, and a great many commentators, refer to the practice of giving money to an organisation for a particular purpose a subsidy, but under your terms nothing can ever be a subsidy unless the amount received is net of any outgoings to the same party - in the case of government, net of tax.
This isn't a terribly helpful definition. If a large company wants to build a factory, and the state offers them a financial grant to built it in their state, that's a subsidy. You don't have to wait until the end of the tax year to work out if the size of the grant exceeds the taxable income declared in that state. If a housing company hires a worker from out of state, and offers to pay 40% of the cost of a new house if he buys one from the company, that's a subsidy of his relocation costs, even if the money he pays to the company exceeds the amount of the reduction they provided.
What I don't fully understand is why you remain wedded to this near-useless definition. Is it because you're ideologically committed to seeing tax money paid as still belonging to the payer, despite all practical and legal evidence to the contrary? Is it because it provides a useful shield to refuse to engage with the arguments people are actually putting forward? Is it because you want to have two sets of rules about who can reasonably receive government assistance, one for those who pay large sums in taxes, and one for those who do not?
Paying 14% in taxes when someone with the same income but not eligible for the deduction pays 15% is not only not mooching, but the difference does not represent a subsidy, and it is mind-blowingly absurd religiously motivated reality avoidance to claim it does.
Yeah, to quote your own advice back to you, it's best not to assume that everyone who expresses disbelief in your ridiculous doctrines, actually deep down believes in your religion, and is just being a dick about it. Please try and understand that you've internalised a definition of subsidy that is almost useless for the topic at hand.
Whether some one is mooching by receiving money that they don't really need, doesn't change because of the size of the tax bill they pay, or whether they receive that subsidy from the same branch of government they pay tax to. It's only about whether they are getting money they don't really need.
