IT'S A WELL-KNOWN fact among purveyors of information and entertainment that you can't go wrong with a list.

List the top 10 places to observe Groundhog Day or the 10 worst renditions of the national anthem at a Super Bowl and you'll have an audience.

Some lists are there for entertainment value. Some, though, actually tell you something.

The various lists in the annual study by the state's Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission fall in the latter category.

The JLARC study compares Virginia with other states in a variety of areas, many of them economic. It uses real numbers, not opinions.

What we can learn about ourselves, thanks to JLARC:

We're pretty well off.

We rank eighth in per capita income (Connecticut is first).

We have the best bond rating in the country, AAA. Actually, we're in a 10-way tie, but we've had ours the longest, since 1938, so we claim No. 1.

Only six states have a smaller percentage of residents living in poverty.

Our unemployment rate is the eighth-best, trailing only Vermont and New Hampshire among states east of the Mississippi.

We can be a bargain.

Only seven states take a smaller share of personal income for state and local taxes.

Higher education is relatively cheap. Virginia's state universities are among the best in the nation (U.Va. and William & Mary consistently are among the top half-dozen among public institutions in the U.S. News & World Report rankings, another list), yet we're the 12th least-expensive state nationally in average annual in-state tuition and fees at four-year state schools.

Whatever you think of the federal government, it's been very, very good to Virginia.

We are second in the nation (to Alaska) in per capital federal expenditures. Between the military and Northern Virginia's cornucopia of federal jobs, our area probably capitalizes more from this than most parts of Virginia. (We're 48th in federal grants, but those figures pale in comparison to the federal expenditure numbers.)

We could be more generous.

We are 47th in the nation in per capita Medicaid expenditures, ahead of only Nevada, Utah and Colorado.

We are 43rd in public welfare expenditures as a percentage of total state expenditures.

We could be more farsighted about kids' education.

We are 35th in state per-pupil funding.

We are 18th in average salary of public schoolteachers.

Bottom line: We are blessed. The states that are richer than we are tend to pay higher taxes. While we don't spend a lot, relatively speaking, on social services, our poverty rate is comparatively low. We offer a lot for a little when it comes to college education. Our proximity to Washington and a big military presence have helped us keep our unemployment rate much lower than our neighbors to the south.

We probably are blessed enough that, if we chose to do so, we could be more generous and more committed to kids' education.

Business Editor Howard Owen writes this biweekly column on business and the economy. He can be reached at 540/374-5539 or howen@freelance star.com.