Minimum wage laws is a socioeconomic topic that is becoming increasingly popular in many large cities. To combat poverty, cities such as San Francisco have recently raised their minimum wages. The city of Los Angeles is now considering that as well.

During the fall of this year, Mayor Garcetti of Los Angeles passed allow that would make it legal to raise the minimum wage in Los Angeles from the current $9.00 an hour minimum to  $13.25 an hour by the year of 2017. While many Los Angeles residents responded well to this proposed increase, other council members thought that the raise should be greater, making the minimum wage $15.25 per hour by 2019.

While both parties undoubtedly had the best interest of all of the people at heart, they failed to recognize the economic impacts that this would have on the community and the short and long term effects it would have on small businesses, especially in lower income areas such as East Los Angeles.

As with most major issues there are people strongly for raising the minimum wage and others who are strongly against it. Reflecting this phenomenon is media that is either strongly in support of one side or another. The problem that exists however is that there is no platform that Los Angeles citizens can utilize to engage in a productive discussion surrounding this issue. LA Perspectives is here to do just that.

In order to engage the most citizens possible and ensure that a wide demographic is represented in the discussions, LA Perspective’s primary platform is a website. Yes, it may seem archaic to do something like this right off of the bat, instead of leveraging the power of tools such as social networks, however the fact of the matter is that not everyone is on social media. That said, it is still essential to integrate this site with social media in order to spread the word and engage more viewers. Here are some of the primary features of the proposed website.

1) The “Your Story” page. This is the foundation and backbone of the site. Here users can upload and share their story through a video or even engage in an online discussion with another site user. The purpose here is for both business owners and employees alike to hear and understand each other’s perspective.

 

 

2) Statistics. When discussing an economic issue, it is absolutely imperative that everyone has an understanding of the statistics surrounding the issue. Statistics here will be of two varieties: A) statistics regarding the current state of Los Angeles and B) statistics predicted by economists who have conducted economic impact studies for this issue.

 

 

 

3) The film. A moving documentary is always a good tool to harness when trying to excite and engage citizens in a discussion surrounding societal and local issues. Users could watch the film on the site and share it through modern social media sites such as YouTube, FaceBook, Twitter, and Google Plus.

 

 

4) A poll. It is always good to measure the public opinion and this tool would be used in order for the City Council members who will vote on this proposal in order to gauge where the public stands on this issue. Visitors would be simply given one change to share whether they are in favor of A) No minimum wage increase, B) Increasing the minimum wage to $13.25/hr, or C) Increasing the minimum wage to $15.25/hr.

 

5) Social media integration. Due to the wide demographic that this site is intended for, LA Perspectives shall leverage the power of the most basic and common social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The media posted on these sites will be simply things that are posted to the main LA Perspectives website shown and thoroughly explained above. For example, if Mr. Stein wrote a post explaining why raising the minimum wage would be harmful to his small grocery store business, then the link to that article will be shared to all social media platforms. If he includes a photo of his shop, then he’ll even get some extra publicity on Instagram. The purpose of integrating social media here is simply to encourage easy and effortless sharing of the media posted to the site. Since these social media sites are some of the most common and familiar ways that people in the twenty first century share information, they seem to be the best platforms to use for spreading the word and sharing the stories posted on the LA Perspectives site.

 

*Note: The images on this page are either A) original works or B) purchased with an extended license from ShutterStock.