Picture yourself in a comfortable wine bar perusing a list of fine wines alongside a list of reputable charities for education.

You select your wine, your charity, and congratulations, one dollar from the price of your glass of wine just went to education.

This particular wine bar is not in business to make a profit, fact is, it’s a nonprofit 50(c)3.

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The mission statement of this particular wine bar reads, “To promote the common good through education one glass of wine at a time.”

This wine bar exists only in my mind, though it could possibly appear in a neighborhood near you in this lifetime.

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We wealthy entrepreneurs should try to put self interest aside and work for the common good.

The spirit of charity used to be the purview of organized religion until various religions put education aside and turned the engine of their charity toward political parties, leaving the uneducated to fend for themselves, resulting in crime and crowded prisons.

We can fix that.

The secret to success with the Neophilanthro Wine Bar is an open book policy of absolute transparency.

Each day’s tallies must be recorded in a register that is kept in a conspicuous place where customers are encouraged to examine it.

These same records can be accessed online. Transparency begets trust, trust begets loyalty, loyalty begets success.

OK, one Neophilanthro Wine Bar is not going to save the world, but what if the spirit of such an enterprise were to catch on and cast its net across the globe? It could change the world.

If one dollar for every glass of wine purchased were to go to education we could move millions into the middle class without having to call on taxes.

The taxes that previously went to education could now be spent on, well, more education.

I’m not a political animal, but when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw, and am fully prepared to run for office on an education platform that deals with matters involving education from 8-12, and other important issues from 1-5.

After five o’clock we repair to the Neophilanthro Wine Bar to talk about promoting education.

We complain about the widening income inequality that is fraying our country’s social fabric and weakening our belief in opportunity, and what’s going to fix that?

It’s not laws or taxes, what’s going to fix that is education, plain and simple. Our ship can right itself through education alone. When states start spending more on education than incarceration our prisons will start to grow smaller and smaller.

It’s the most elemental formula in social science. (You can quote me on that, though in full disclosure I have no idea if it’s true.)

The most noble profession is teaching. Doctoring and nursing are right up there, but “Educator” is the profession which we must all hail and support.

There can be no doubt that great teachers are now working in less righteous fields, it becomes our job to convince them to enter the arena where the real fight is being fought — education.

Welcome to the Tahoe Neophilanthro Wine Bar…

Learn more about McAvoy Layne at http://www.ghostoftwain.org.