I agree that anything the Government mandates is not necesarily good, in fact it typically has unintended consequences. I am not exactly a liberal, rather center right.  However, minimum wages have been regulated for many decades.  I believe this is so because those workers with the lowest skill set enjoy this wage protection, a social net so to speak, I am not against that.  Afterall, there are no completely free capitalistic societies, there are always some degree of socialistic checks and balances.

In today's environment, after so many decades of depressed wages, I believe a push in that direction is not necessarily a bad thing, within reason of course.