Beginning on April 1st, 2012 Thailand's government honoured one of the promises it made during elections and raised minimum wages across the country. This is only the beginning for new politics sweeping countries across Asia and it is a mirror of the same direction being taken in Latin America.

The Malaysian government, for example, will soon institute the first ever minimum wage in the history of the country and this is the direction that countries across Asia are heading in. Asian countries have decided that the way to combat a widening global inequity gap is by strengthening domestic social security nets -- the most basic of which is the minimum wage.