Every so often a flash of hope flickers past my eye and I think that maybe, just maybe in these times of global debt turmoil, the Israeli government is smart enough not to do too many idiotic things and get themselves in too much debt. And then I see stories like this one.

According to the proposal, the cost of gluten-free bread will be kept at a level that is never higher than that of standard bread. In addition, those who suffer from celiac disease will be reimbursed for up to NIS 500 per month per family for purchasing special food, and the income tax rates of companies that sell gluten-free food products will not go above 25 percent.

So now I have to pay for the gluten free bread of some guy with celiac who wants to eat a sponge. Beyond costing hundreds of millions of shekels a year, the program will:

1. Waste every shekel that goes into it
2. Disrupt market forces and the prices of other foods competing with the gluten free bread
3. Raise the price of corn that goes into these gluten-free sponges
4. Cause many many many more people who don’t even have celiac to be diagnosed with celiac just so they can get 500 shekels more a month from Uncle Shmuel
5. Cause 20 more unintended consequences that the government will then have to regulate by force with committees who get government paychecks
6. Be immoral, because I shouldn’t have to pay for the luxuries of a celiac, a luxury by the way that tastes like crap.

Before anyone objects to my heartlessness, I am also on a gluten free diet. Not because I am celiac, but because I subscribe to the Primal Blueprint diet and way of life. And I do not eat gluten-free bread either, because I do not eat corn. My food is much more expensive than someone’s who eats grains, and I’m not asking for other people to subsidize my shopping list.

It will be a long time coming before I will be able to convince anyone in this country that it is not the government’s role to take care of someone’s celiac, that it is immoral and unjewish to force someone to pay for someone else’s luxury. Israel is still a country deeply mired in Marxist ideology and is very statist.

I shiver to think that this is where our money is going while the finances of the entire western world are on fire.