AN EMPIRICAL PROPOSAL ON POWER, KNOWLEDGE AND TRUTH OF CORRELATIONS AMONG THE MINIMUM WAGE,FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT IN THE INDUSTRIAL SECTOR AND EXPORT

This research showed the correlations among the minimum wage, foreign direct investment in the industrial sector, and export. These entities were criticized severely by the authorities on the Pua Thai Party s policy announcement on the guarantee oflabors minimum wage of300 baht/day. The present research then employedan advancedquantitative methodology, analyzing time-series data ofthe minimum wage,foreign direct investment in the industrial sector, and export by regression, the Johansen Cointegration Test, and the Pairwise Granger Causality Test. It was revealed that the minimum wage correlated in the same direction with both foreign direct investments in the industrial sector and export. Whereas the Johansen Cointegration Test showed that the minimum wage had no cointegration with the foreign direct investment in the industrial sector. However, the Pairwise Granger Causality Test showed a causal relationship with the export according. These results indicated that the claim that the minimum wage increase affecting the competitiveness ofthe country with regard to foreign direct investment in the industrial sector and export, had been reinforced by the authorities superior status to dominate the process ofbuilding a body of knowledge. The authorities superior status was also used to distort the truth to control the society. This is thus not a good-faith mistake but an effort of discourse fights on the economic unfairness and social-class discrimination, which is the root ofThailand s structural problems.