A lot. They make it illegal for you to hire someone at a rate below the minimum wage, even if they agree to it. They force unemployment of those with skills b

A lot. They make it illegal for you to hire someone at a rate below the minimum wage, even if they agree to it. They force unemployment of those with skills below the average minimum-wage employee's. They pick an arbitrary minimum wage mandated by government fiat, instead of determined in the marketplace. Such an arbitrary wage suffers from the economic calculation problem, where rational allocation of goods is impossible without free markets and prices to communicate supply and demand. Changes in the minimum wage affect other things, like the price of food in restaurants, in way which is nonlinear from the actual supply and demand of those goods and services. It's as though there is pressure for prices to move upwards or downwards in response to market conditions, but the minimum wage, or other prices directly affected by the minimum wage, are not allowed to respond to those market conditions, and so a shortage or oversupply occurs. https://fee.org/articles/topics/minimum%20wage https://fee.org/articles/topics/minimum%20wage