This is how you start chipping away at income equality - propose to raise the minimum wage to a level people can actually live on.

Just three days on the job, Seattle's new mayor Ed Murray, announced plans to raise the minimum wage for city workers.

"Today I will issue an executive order directing my department heads to develop a comprehensive strategy to implementing a $15 minimum wage in the City of Seattle for city employees," Murray said in a news conference Friday morning.

Murray said his personnel director and budget director will lead the effort and explore options to make the order retroactive to the start of 2014. Murray has said that he'll give his team four months to raise the wage.

The new mayor said he recognizes he'll have to work closely with the city council for its buy-off.

"I think it's important, once again, to remember that when I talked about an affordable city in the campaign and during the transition, we cannot, in this administration and this city ... focus on a single issue. There is no single strategy to make this city affordable for low income and middle class working people," said Murray.