One of Lansing’s longest-serving public policy advocates recently retired without much media attention. That shouldn’t have been surprising.

Sharon Parks, president of the Michigan League for Human Services, spent 34 years representing a constituency that’s too often overlooked as state government divvies its resources among the various interest groups competing for them.

Her work was centered on trying to lift up the million-plus men, women and children on the lowest rungs of Michigan’s economic ladder, folks who suffer the most in tough times like those we are facing now.

We live in a society in which the poor often are blamed for their status in life. And we generally accept the notion, without a great deal of evidence to support it, that the benefits of government tax policy aiding the wealthy will trickle down to the rest of us.

(One of my favorite lines in the recent gubernatorial election campaign came from Democratic candidate Virg Bernero who likely expressed the sentiments of many when he said, "I’m tired of being trickled on.”)

Rich people tend to save much of their tax-cut money. Average folks spend it on groceries and mortgage payments.

The power of the wealthy class and its minions in Congress was on full display in the debate over extending unemployment benefits to millions of long-term unemployed who cannot find work.

Republicans refused to lend a hand to those most in need of income unless expiring Bush-era tax breaks for the rich were extended.

But Parks says we must focus more on enacting policies that raise up the poor, not just as a moral imperative, but also because Michigan’s economy will continue to suffer if we don’t.

“A state or city is not a good place when you have a large number of people in poverty or with low income,” she told me, shortly before retiring on Dec. 3.

One of the state’s most important public policies priorities, she said, should be to educate adults for better employment opportunities.

The statistics showing how unprepared the state’s workers are for higher-level jobs are stunning.

An estimated 1.7 million Michigan adults — one of every three — don’t have the basic skills or credentials to land a job that pays enough to support a family, according to the state Council on Labor and Economic Growth. Of those, 692,000 lack a high school or general equivalency diploma.

It’s no wonder then that Michigan is filled with lots of low-skilled, low-wage jobs.

Four of the top six jobs in the state don’t pay above the federal poverty threshold of $21,756 for a family of four, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Those jobs are retail salespeople, cashiers, restaurant wait staff and fast-food workers.

“We can’t keep creating low-paying jobs,” Parks said.

Governor-elect Rick Snyder says, and many economic experts agree, that the nation is moving rapidly to a knowledge-based economy in which most good-paying jobs will require at least some college education.

But Michigan might struggle for years economically because its current work force is so ill equipped to fill knowledge jobs.

Adult education and job training funds have been trimmed in recent years. Parks doesn’t see those things becoming top priorities in the new, Republican-controlled Legislature.

“I doubt that adult learning is on the radar screen of the majority,” she said.

The job of putting it there now falls to term-limited Sen. Gilda Jacobs, D-Huntington Woods, who succeeds Parks as the league’s president in January.

With incoming Republican lawmakers vowing to slash taxes and spending, Jacobs faces an uphill battle that Parks fought for decades.

E-mail Rick Haglund at haglund.rick@gmail.com.