Always the socialists/communists try and describe what socialism/communism is while claiming at the same time that a proposal within the dogma thereof is not. No; any governmental “safety net” is socialism/communism. What is dubiously termed a “safety net” is the domain of private charity and private enterprise.
Any “subsidy” is one’s own earnings taken by the government and returned to them minus the government’s “broker’s fee”. Nothing equitable about it at all, and no fit inside the philosophy of US conservatism. Start making the people comfortable in poverty and society breaks down.
“No; any governmental ‘safety net’ is socialism/communism.”
Sorry. You are just plain wrong about this. And your response is a typical knee-jerk reaction based on ideological dogma rather than critical analysis.
Law enforcement is a safety net. Emergency services is a safety net. Disaster relief is a safety net. Do you think conservatism is just economic survival of the fittest when dealing with disease, draught, widespread crop failures? How about other major natural disasters? How about war?
The key is to go to the underlying principle of ownership and treat the rich and poor equally rather than with favoritism.
“Start making the people comfortable in poverty and society breaks down.”
As I said, you have to avoid incentivizing things like this.
The very existence of currency involves government. The conservative utopia you imagine does not exist any more than the communist or socialist ones. Conservatism is about limited (not non-existent) government and personal responsibility (not pie in the sky self-actualization).
When people or companies innovate, our government rewards this with a limited monopoly (which unfortunately has been parlayed into eternal monopolies) for the benefit of everyone. This requires the forfeiting of certain natural rights of free citizens. These rights have value. Benefits given in exchange for these rights is both reasonable and consistent with conservatism. And that does not remotely resemble socialism or communism, especially when you remove means testing and replace it with the one simple test of whether someone is a citizen.