PR often helps make money for the rich but rarely for the poor. PR experts advise the wealthy how to handle crises but don’t counsel those affected by poverty who often resort to poor choices as a means of getting by.

PR helps the rich pass laws that are great for business and professionals, but may pass on steps that could be great for adding jobs, affordable housing and neighborhood safety.

A rich kid can choose a college to study computers, engineering, nursing, writing, accounting and other skills that thousands of employers want. But a poor kid in an impoverished school may attend a school with few resources, where they teach skills that almost no employers want.

To earn money, a poor kid without above average intelligence may have little opportunity aside from crime or the military. Unemployment among minors can run above 50 percent. Fortunately— although it isn’t yet happening nearly as much as it could — government could retain PR firms of all sizes to help the poor and save many billions more than the PR costs.

Government relations: Instead of advocating only algebra, history and English lit, students should have a right to study professions where employer demand often exceeds supply, such as car repair, truck driving, hairdressing, nursing or medical technologist skills. The public needs these services.

Employment counseling: Can you imagine how many millions of kids don’t know how to get a job? Or conversely, what skills they should cultivate to keep one and advance? PR firms can create booklets, websites and tapes for this.

Internal communications: Just as employers have skilled editors producing employee publications and websites that encourage attitudes and behavior good for employees and their employers, PR can do this for students and their schools.

Practical political science: How does one approach local legislative offices for help when it comes to getting a job, an apartment, an education or another chance? Why can’t we offer services to train and eventually license someone to be a cab driver, a barber or electrician, or join a union?

Practical domestic science: Governor Christie recently said that keeping a prisoner in jail costs $49,000 a year. America has more than two million people in jail. For those in poverty who don’t go to jail, more use of PR by our governments could reduce crime, reduce welfare, reduce hospitalization and drug treatment costs, and help many in the bottom economic third climb to where the middle third is now.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal ...” says the Declaration of Independence, but we know equality is neither self-evident nor true. Some are created smarter or less smart than others, others richer or less rich.

What is true — if less evident — is that nearly all people can be guided to be productive and happy. PR can do this, and more use of PR by government can help make that happen.

Wouldn’t it be great to read not just news of how the rich are using PR, but also how the government is using PR to help people affected by poverty? Not everyone can grow up to be President, but PR could at least help more people grow.