McDonald's Corp. for years has been in the cross hairs of a national campaign to raise the minimum wage, a movement that intensified last week as demonstrators marched on its Oak Brook headquarters.

The fast-food behemoth has rejected protesters' call to more than double the national base pay from its current $7.25 an hour to $15 an hour as too high. It has said in a statement that it respects the right of employees to choose whether or not they want to unionize.

The official McDonald's stance on the minimum wage calls it "an important discussion that needs to take into account the highly competitive nature of the industries that employ minimum wage workers, as well as consumers and the thousands of small businesses which own and operate the vast majority of McDonald's restaurants."

But earlier this month, in a less combative forum, McDonald's Chief Executive Don Thompson told students at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management that it could handle a theoretical bump in the minimum wage to, say, $10.10 an hour, the figure supported by President Barack Obama and others.

"McDonald's will be fine," Thompson said in the May 12 discussion. "We'll manage through whatever the additional cost implications are."

In this, one may assume, a minimum wage hike isn't that different from escalating commodity prices, in which, whether the market is favorable or not, the chain can leverage its scale to negotiate the best possible deals.

Upping minimum pay nationally would be felt across not just the fast-food industry but the larger economy. Exploiting its size, McDonald's should be able to offset increased costs through efficiencies its peers may not easily match.

But if its ubiquity and reach help McDonald's weather a minimum wage increase, they're also what make it such an inviting target for this battle, and the investment Service Employees International Union has made in financing protests against other fast-food operators and retailers around the country.

Those who would like to see union representation and the minimum elevated to what's considered a living wage (an expensive distinction) want to link themselves to McDonald's so that you'll consider their message every time you see the golden arches in an ad or in front of a restaurant.

Washington being Washington, it doesn't seem to going anywhere anytime soon, but legislation introduced on Capitol Hill months ago would increase the national minimum wage to $10.10 in three 95-cent hikes spread over two years. The minimum then would be linked to the rate of inflation and there would be tax breaks for small businesses to lessen the pain.

Thompson indicated at Kellogg that McDonald's likely could live with that.

"You know, our franchisees look at me when I say this and they start to worry: 'Don, don't you say it. Don't you say we support $10.10,'" Thompson said. "I will tell you we will support legislation that moves forward."

Thompson was quick to add, though, that this also would be as good a time as any to stagger introduction of incremental costs faced by small-business owners (like McDonald's franchisees) seeking to comply with immigration reform and the Affordable Care Act. "If those things were laid out sequentially and strategically so that they don't create an overbearance on small business, I think that there's a way to do this," he said.

All told, Thompson devoted around 1,400 words — a couple hundred words longer than this column — to answering a pair of minimum-wage questions from Kellogg students. He spent far less time at last week's stage-managed annual shareholders meeting, where he referred to McDonald's paying "fair and competitive wages" and providing opportunities for its workers.

"I want to make it clear I'm not here to give any corporate answers," Thompson said at Kellogg, which streamed his talk online. "You all get a chance to talk to Don, not the CEO. … I understand that CEO is attached to my name. But when I give an answer, it's the truth."

Those truths, as he laid them out, were: Minimum wages will go up over time. McDonald's, which he said doesn't consider itself a minimum-wage employer, will pay whatever the law and market forces require it to pay. Some decisions on matters such as pay are made not at the corporate level, but by the company's franchisees, generally small-business owners, that he said control roughly 90 percent of the company's U.S. restaurants.

Echoing a point he would later make at Thursday's shareholders' meeting, Thompson stressed that the company saw many of its jobs as launching pads, not destinations. He said more than a third of the McDonald's workforce is between the ages of 16 and 19, around 60 percent is younger than 24 and about 70 percent works on a part-time basis.

His view is that education and the chance to advance are far more important than minimum pay. And, because it's a first job for many young people, he sees McDonald's as a steppingstone to both.

Those adamantly against an increase in the minimum wage tend to cite a February report from the Congressional Budget Office, which reported the increase to $10.10 might mean the loss of as many as 500,000 jobs. The same study, however, said the increase would lift 900,000 Americans out of poverty and increase the wages of 16.5 million.

But even Warren Buffett is perplexed, saying that after 50 years of consideration, he still doesn't know what the minimum wage should be.

"In economics, you always have to say, 'And then what?'" Buffett said last month on CNN. "And the real question is, are more people going to be better off if it is raised, and I don't know the answer to that. … You do lose some employment as you increase the minimum wage. If you didn't, I'd be for having it be $15 an hour, if you actually got the same result in all other ways. But you won't."