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I think the McDonald's story is used in the article for illustration purposes for the main subject of article, which is "Taxpayers [...] are subsidizing the industry's profits."

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That's not right. Taxpayers are subsidizing every industry that employs low wage workers, which is basically every industry. That includes janitors at Google and Apple.

Wouldn't be a good example for propaganda. Apple is busy abusing Chinese slave workers; it's always McDonald's that abuses poor Americans.

If McDonald's (and the rest of the industry) was forced to pay workers more, they'd probably raise their prices. Maybe we should say that middle-class taxpayers are subsidizing the middle class' desire for cheap fast food.

There is this myth implied by many, explicity said by others, that this would be proportional to the wage increase, so cancel it out.

Studies have shown the price increase would be around 2-5% for most industries who had to provide a living wage.

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