Maybe. It depends if the wage increases are going to the buyers of your product or not. If the wage increases are indeed flowing to low-paid fast food workers and others in the same general category who eat a lot of fast food, then you can probably just increase the price of Quarter Pounders. If someone who doesn't eat Quarter Pounders is getting the money, not so much.

The obvious other adjustment would be to decrease the rent, but that would affect loan valuations, and we can't have another round of bank failures.

(The other problem is the building materials shortage because you can't inflate yourself out of the shortage of available housing, you need to actually build new construction, but we are getting sidetracked.)

Or this narrative is being used to drive price increases. McDonald’s increased their profits and increased their prices last I heard and one didn’t necessarily drive the other.

If they go up by the same percentage, it's running in place, not extra profits.

It’s not the same.

Isn't this inflation also caused by the Federal Reserve printing a lot more money?

edit: Wait the TREASURY prints money, not the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve just... greases the wheels of banks, I guess?