Michael Luis

By passenger volume, Sea-Tac is now the eighth busiest airport in the country, serving a metro area that is the fifteenth largest. A prolonged virus shutdown will damage a regional economic engine.

As economic activity plummets, local governments are scrambling to figure out how badly their budgets will suffer this year from a drop in taxable sales. It’s going to be tough, but how tough remains to be seen.

Consumer spending is drying up and no one knows how long it will take before it returns. We don’t know if diners will flood back into restaurants as soon as they have permission. One worry: consumers will use the return to normalcy as a time to restock depleted savings.

At retailers and restaurants across the Seattle area, business is evaporating. Customers are just not going out to places where they might encounter other people. One response from those who want...

On a per-capita basis, each resident of King County had, on average, 36 percent more income to spend in 2018 than in 2010, after adjusting for inflation. Insane housing prices? All those new, expensive bars and restaurants? Bentleys and Teslas? Now you know why.

The rapid hiring by Amazon explains a good deal of the Millennial bulge. At the other end of the age spectrum, few older people migrate to a place like King County, and some older people will migrate out to warmer, quieter, less expensive places.

In dynamic West Coast cities, attracting young people from around the country does not seem to be a problem. Whether they choose to stay and build their lives in these cities is another question, and is tied closely to the price of housing and the lengths of commutes.

Backyard housing for the homeless can get to a higher scale if we keep it simple, keep it inexpensive and leave complex case management to the professionals.

The Warren campaign came up with maybe the worst possible approach. But before we get to that, let’s put some numbers to this dilemma.

Each of these revenue sources is embedded in the economy and into the budgets of families, governments and businesses. This discussion should not just be on the narrow question of new revenues...