New data from the Census Bureau show Virginia ranks 17th in the nation for per-pupil spending. Each Virginia pupil was the beneficiary of (on average) $10,210 in the 2006-07 school year—an 8 percent increase over the previous academic year. State figures show per-pupil spending rose another 8 percent from 2006-07 to 2007-08. Some think Virginia should increase spending even faster than that. The common assumption seems to be that bigger dollar inputs will lead to better outcomes. Maybe so—and maybe not.

With gasoline prices rising, Americans spent more in June than the previous month—despite falling incomes. For the rest of the year, economists expect falling wages and rising unemployment to act as a drag on spending. Americans boosted their spending 0.4 percent in June, the Commerce Department said yesterday, the second consecutive monthly increase.

Someone looking for a yardstick to measure the profligacy of the party in power in Washington would have to search far and wide for a better one than a remark by Shea Hollifield. Regarding the 2,252-percent increase in federal money that Virginia will receive to weatherize drafty homes, Hollifield—deputy director of the Department of Housing and Community Development—says, “I was stunned. Spending that much money will be a challenge.“

If you haven’t heard of the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care yet, wait. It is fast becoming the Book of Kells in the Washington policy world. The Obama White House has realized that Dartmouth’s research could enable it to pull off—or at least to sell—the big dream of health-care reform: affordable universal coverage. Under ordinary circumstances, broadening government involvement in health care would be a hugely expensive proposition—and the more generous the benefits, the higher the cost. But researchers at Dartmouth have compiled decades of data showing two things: (1) there are huge geographic differences in Medicare outlays (e.g., more than $16,000 per beneficiary in Miami, versus less than $8,400 in San Francisco), and (2) those differences seem to produce no difference in health outcomes.

Next time you take some cash out of the bank, go for big bills. The higher the denomination, the more likely you are to forgo frivolous things, according to a study from the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland.

We are a nation of consumers. The goods and services bought and sold by individuals make up about two-thirds of all spending in the United States. That means our collective habits have an impact beyond our pocketbooks. “Consumers are king,“ said Raymond Owens, a senior economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. “Usually as consumer spending goes, so goes the economy.“