[ojwozzae] Is minimum wage evil?

A regulatory minimum wage inevitably induces the formation of black and gray markets for labor, including industries that form around exploiting loopholes to skirt the regulation.

Speculate that these effects cause far more harm than the benefits of minimum wage.  The harm consists of increasing the stratification of society.  The lower classes get disproportionately employed in these black and gray markets for labor.

I distinguish between minimum wage being merely economically harmful (another example: deadweight loss) versus evil: evil because those who support minimum wage, especially raising it, may in fact support the social segregation mechanisms and class divisions that the black markets and gray markets for labor induce.  It is evil because it is a politically correct way to support segregation.  "Those people" will work in industries safely segregated away from you, so you don't have to worry about unexpectedly encountering them.  You can identify who "those people" are by finding out their line of work.  Their line of work will render some of "those people" permanently untouchable.

There are other mechanisms for income redistribution, for example, giving money directly (gathered from taxes).  But that seems objectionable for similar reasons.  Maybe this is not a coincidence.