Just in case you wondered what the financial situation of McDonalds is:
Total revenues: 27567 million $
Net income: 5464 million $
2012 Annual Report.pdfLooks like they can afford to pay a little more.
Pay who? Pay the low wage workers? Pay for what? They don't deserve it, if they wanted they could spend their time doing business instead of whacking it off to hentai and watching Breaking Bad or whatever teenagers are doing these days, their net income is 5464 million $ and they deserve every cent, taking even a dollar from their net income forcefully would reduce them to slavery.
Not everyone is intelligent enough or motivated enough to start a business. If they were, we would be chock full of businesses with no workers! We need workers, don't fool yourself. If you are a business owner, you understand the value of having employees and people under you.
Also, they are still bottom of the barrel. So does that mean they do not deserve a living wage, even if they work 40 hours a week? I fail to see your logic on whether they deserve it. You deserve a living wage if you work, period. If you do MORE work, start a business, provide more value to society, you deserve more than a living wage. Pretty basic stuff.
If they have 100,000 US employees, and paid each of them an additional $1000/annually, that would amount to $100m in wage increases. Their net income would fall from $5464million to $5364million. You still don't think they can afford it?