Caveats of minimum wage.

Mises has a really nice explanation of why it's not a good thing that minimum wage laws lead to increased capital investment and technological advance in the affected industries (think kiosks at McDonalds).

Paraphrasing: it's true that capital flows to the industries affected by minimum wage laws, leading to "labour saving" technologies there. However, that convertible (Mises's word for "non-specific") capital, all else constant, had to come from places where it was being used for more urgent wants. Now artificially drawn to the mw-affected industries, making them look more "efficient" in terms of labour, that capital is gone from where it used to be, leaving those industries inefficiently labour intensive, impoverishing workers there. Mucking around with wages distorts the pattern of capital use, driving it to places it isn't needed as much and away from the places where it's needed more. The result is that everyone, save the small number in the mw-affected industries who kept their jobs and saw a raise (the analogue of the US steel companies with a tariff), is worse off.

Of course, these effects are very hard to see without some understanding of economics, and having an economics that understands the convertibility of capital and its role in generating productivity and rising real wages is important. As is being able to trace through and value the long run effects.

As he points out, in the long run, the only way real wages rise permanently is when the growth of capital outstrips the growth in population, putting more productivity in the hands of labour through its cooperation with capital. Anything else is a chimera.