Yes, I know this, though a lot of businesses don’t actually do that.

That’s not my point though, limiting your competition by raising expenses to a higher level for smaller businesses would help McDonalds. There isn’t much hope for him to get the minimum wage lowered to make it “fair”, what CEO of such a public company would want to make that stand. By pointing out the unfairness would be to make it more expensive for his competition that don’t have to play by the same rules would help McDonald’s by hurting the local Mom and Pop or smaller restaurant chains. by hurting his competition. He gets to appear to take the high road by pointing out others should be held to the same higher standards and do the right thing. McDonald’s is already making it work at the higher wage because of how big they are, but their competition for food options probably won’t be able to do the same.

This is similar to how WalMart, Home Depot and etc expanded back in the day. Pay more, lower operating costs per sqft of retail space and less expensive prices than the mom and pops. This runs the smaller competition out of business because they can’t keep up and now WalMart/Home Depot or whatever has a much bigger piece of the local market as there are few options for consumers to spend their money with.

Mcdonald’s has gotten much more expensive in the last several years while also losing customers but he can’t lower expenses so he is trying to raise the operating costs for everyone else since he knows McDonald’s can survive for longer at the higher expense then almost anyone else.