Not to discredit your argument, but in some places (countries) McDonald's has changed their "look" to something more akin to a restaurant, with less cartoon-ish colors, quieter-ish music (or no music at all) and different ambiance lighting to actually resemble a place a family would go. I've heard before that in the US there's this big disparity where in one state/city McD has a completely different "look" than others from other regions, sometimes making it look like a completely different brand only having the trademark M to identify it.
It's not a deluxe restaurant but it's not horrible. The coffee they serve is perfectly fine as well.
That’s how a lot of the recently renovated McDonald’s look around here too (bay area.)
I don't know much about how they looked in the past but currently they have sober colours. This is what a current restaurant looks like: https://s3-media0.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/RxMy6l6HjBZujf7pHjtR... Seems like mostly hamburger colours? Mustard, lettuce, tomato.
That said, the alternatives are also poor. Bars are small, obscene and focused on drinking; "serious" restaurants are exclusionary and expensive; parks are, well, open to elements.
Where I live, we have many anti-cafes. Some are highly thematic, quiet, stylish, with comfy rooms for groups which want privacy, and time there is cheap enough to make food joints non-competitive. Then there's libraries (though in the US, it seems, they've come to serve another community function, for an even lower income demographic).
The sentiment that this is "a new low" is not nearly as damnable and undemocratic as some here try to signal. It is possible to do better than having a gaudy corporation's food joint serve as the core for modern community.