[kwlug-disc] AI and social justice

[John Sellens]

| On Wed, May 27, 2026 at 5:36 PM Chris Frey <cdfrey at foursquare.net> wrote:
| 
| >
| > McDonalds apparently has a 44% operating margin:
| > https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/MCD/key-statistics/
| > I'm told that in a competitive market it should be around 10%.  So why
| > does McDonalds have such a high percentage?  How?  And why are we not
| > creating competing businesses to eat McDonalds' lunch?  I'd love to
| > know the answers to this.


I believe that this is the operating margin for the management
corporation, and not the margin for restaurants.  I think roughly 95% of
Mcdonald's locations are franchises, so the bulk of the restaurant revenue
and expenses will not show up in the McDonald's Corporation results.

McDonald's Corporation is not in the restaurant business.

Intellectual property and marketing asset management and licensing is a
different business than operating restaurants, and has different typical
financial ratios.

Cheers

John