This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, July 21st, 2015. I'm Caleb Brown.

The U.S. has spent tens of trillions of dollars fighting poverty with little impact on the overall rate.

Civil society may hold the key to solving even this

seemingly intractable social problem. Joe Kwong is director of economic

opportunity programs at the Philanthropy Roundtable. We discussed how private sector philanthropy can help people get out of poverty

and into the middle class.

We're talking about a range of different kinds of individuals

from ex-offenders to at-risk youth, single moms, people struggling

with addiction, mental illness.

So there's a wide range, but basically if it's someone who's chronically unemployed, it really is a lack of work. They haven't

been working, they don't know how to work and you hate to make this sound just too soft

but it's the whole range of soft skills.

There really are legions of people who have no idea what it means to wake up to an alarm clock,

set a clock, get to work, get to work prepared, and be ready to do the job that they need to do.

And it seems hard to believe, but that's what the majority of these non-profits that are helping people achieve life transformations are doing.

It's an attitude adjustment that says you need to work.

You want to get out of poverty? You need to work. What clears a way though? What can we do to clear away those obstacles because as you

point out in in this book here a job is the best solution to poverty.

Right.

So what can people of civil society do that has nothing to do with government to clear away the obstacles to allowing people

the opportunity to work if they want to.

Right.

...