On the minimum wage

I'm still torn about the minimum wage. This is really the first reading I've done about it. Although I agree in theory that it shouldn't be allowed and there should be no need for it, my first instinct is to view it as something like food stamps or unemployment benefits, where it's one of the better performing government subsidies.

FFF:

The original minimum-wage law was enacted in part to decrease the advantage that low-wage southern factories had over northern factories; Rep. John Dent of Pennsylvania later explained: "We had to do something; we were losing all of our jobs to the south." The new wage law devastated Puerto Rico; as economist Benjamin Anderson noted, "Immense unemployment resulted there through the sheer inability of important industries to pay the 25 cents an hour."