(Medford, Mass.) With help from the Democratic Governance Panel of the National League of Cities, the November Fifth Coalition has written up six excellent examples of communities in which broad public deliberation has addressed serious, difficult issues, from crime to sprawl to a major budget deficit. These examples need to be part of the public debate, so that candidates, reporters, and ordinary people understand the potential of citizen’s work.

(Medford, MA) If we think about the “youth vote” as an aggregate, we’ll focus on a trend of decline followed by a significant rebound in 2004 (the blue line to the left). We will notice that the rate of youth voting is always low in the USA. And we will look for interventions that target young people–such as civic education, which has modest but significantly positive effects on turnout.

However, the blue trend shown above masks enormous variation. The proportion of eligible under-25s who voted was about 36% in 2000, 19% in 2002, and 46% in 2004. In 2004, 69% of eligible voters under 25 turned out in Minnesota, compared to 36% in Arkansas: almost a two-to-one ratio. (See this map.) These huge gaps should turn our attention away from “youth” (whose behavior varies depending on the circumstances) and toward elections. What made the 2004 campaign in Minnesota so much more interesting than, say, the 2002 campaign in Mississippi? Could the former have been a competitive race with high stakes?

Enhanced competition would make much more difference than civic education. It can even seem mendacious to exhort kids to vote in a civics class, if most students don’t live in places where their votes count.

(Indianapolis) According to USA Today (which I get in my hotel room),

Inequality within age groups hasn’t changed much. People in their 30s or 60s have roughly the same wealth distribution among themselves as in 1989. What’s changed is inequality between age groups.

Older people are thriving in wealth and income. Younger people are not. How wealth and income have changed for two age groups, after adjusting for inflation:

• Ages 55-59: Median net worth — the middle point for all households — rose 97% over 15 years to $249,700 in 2004, the most recent year for which data is available. Median income rose 52%.

• Ages 35-39: Median household net worth fell 28% to $48,940. Median income fell 10%.

I’m not sure this widening gap is, by itself, a social injustice. Most people in their thirties today will still be alive and in their fifties twenty years from now. If the fifties continues to be a decade of wealth, they will be fine. In part, this will happen because they will inherit their parents’ savings.

But that is a static picture. It could be that the gap is not between decades of age but between generations. The Generation-X’ers could move through life consistently poorer than the Boomers, especially if part of the cause is upward redistribution through tax and social policy–and if the Boomers are spending much of their wealth on imports.

Besides, it’s not simply the case that each Boomer has a Gen-X offspring. Some Boomers have no kids. Some Xers are immigrants whose parents live in foreign countries. Some Xers have already lost their parents. There is variation in families’ wealth and size in both generations. Thus the enormous aggregate wealth of the Boomer generation could be inherited by the Xers and their kids in very unequal ways. Then inequality within generations would increase as a result of massive inequality between generations.

One: A terraced island rises from a southern sea. Snatches of Gregorian chant can be heard. A barefoot friar, his tonsured pate surmounted by a halo, sings in church Latin: “Brother, you were a schismatic and a heretic. You denied popes, saints, fathers, and councils. To purge your sins, you shall say 50 million Ave Marias. While you perform that penance, your cellmate shall be another American sinner. Brother Fallwell, meet brother Capote.”

Two: A giant lotus blossom floats amid puffy clouds in a cerulean sky. A beatific and cherubic personage, seated cross-legged upon the lotus, speaks in Sanskrit: “Beloved Jerry, you were not very compassionate, were you? It is not my will, but the immortal law of nature: you shall be cast down into the briny depths of New York Harbor to feed, as a flatworm, upon the effluvia of Greenwich Village. May you be a self-effacing and contented flat-worm so that you may be reborn the next time as a grub.”

Three: Peter, wearing long hair and love beads, waves everyone through the gate even though it’s no wider than the eye of a needle. Jerry enters to see, though an acrid haze, clumps of people sprawled on an infinite grassy lawn. Everyone seems to be singing along to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. An angel arrives to ask Jerry whether he would like to join the saved in the single-sex couples area? Or would he first like to try some heavenly kumba?

I spent yesterday at a board meeting, part of which was devoted to reviewing balance sheets. It was my fourth experience with an accountant’s report since spring arrived. During the budget portion of any board meeting, I always feel like a “b-minus” student. I can follow the discussion, but only with a delay that prevents me from participating much. If there were a test, I would get about 20 percent of the answers wrong. I would answer some items correctly by repeating phrases, not because I understood the fundamental concepts. (In other words, I would bluff my way to 80%.) Since I have difficulty in following my more competent peers, my attention tends to wander.

However, I do have good motivation, and that keeps me from failing entirely. It seems to me that a balance sheet is an excellent tool for planning in the non-profit world–if the spreadsheet is organized to answer questions that matter for management. If all you want to know is whether you are headed for bankruptcy, then the exercise is not very illuminating. Usually, all you can conclude is that everyone had better work hard and cross their fingers for grants and contracts to come through. If, however, you want to know whether you are putting discretionary resources, such as time or cash, in the right places, a well-constructed balance sheet can be enormously informative.