From a so-called “economic miracle” to a human rights disaster, Venezuela has followed in the footsteps of literally every single socialist or communist country ever with its country in complete collapse. Crime is on the rise, the people are starving, protests are going all throughout the country, and unconfirmed rumors are coming out that President Nicolas Maduro is considering leaving.

People have a bizarre way of deflecting criticism. In some cases, when they hear something that questions their worldview, they will go so far as to pretend it does not exist. At the moment, that is happening right now in Seattle.

For the second time this year, a city has found that there are no quick fixes to addressing poverty and raising wages. Recently, the city of Seattle funded a study on the impact its minimum wage increase was having and concluded that it was having a negative impact on the city’s economy. As is surprising to no one who has been paying attention to the effects of the minimum wage over the past few years, it has reduced employment, economic growth, and works hours.

On Friday, March 24, Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh vetoed a new $15 minimum wage that would have been implemented by 2022. This makes passing the measure’s future in serious doubt since an override of the mayor’s veto requires 12 out of 15 city council members to vote against and already several who voted for the measure have decided not to support an override.

Earlier this week, I wrote a piece about how Bernie Sanders' economic policies have come under criticism by a number of progressive economists for their unrealistic math, While it remains true that Sanders’ policies are mostly indefensible can’t possibly work, David Dayen at the New Republic, in his response to the criticisms, actually makes a very good point about economic forecasting. He writes “What I do want to challenge is the idea that there’s one serious, evidence-based way to perform economic forecasting. The truth is that most economic forecasts that look several years into the future are flawed, almost by definition.”

The annual State of the Union Speech is an opportunity for the president to update the country on the progress made in the last year, as well as lay out an agenda for the coming twelve months. With 2016 being the last opportunity for Barack Obama to address the nation as president, it’s understandable that he would be more focused on summing up his accomplishments in office than looking forward to the future. Given his actual record, though, it’s no surprise that he has resulted to a few exaggerations, or outright untruths, in trying to whitewash his two terms as Commander in Chief. Here are six claims to be made in tonight’s speech that are unbelievable for the simple reason that they.

In this week’s Republican Presidential debate on CNN, a couple of the candidates took a brief time-out from slinging personal attacks and responding to trivia to address some actual issues affecting our economy. One of these issues is the oft-demagogued minimum wage.