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Economic Exercises

Here’s the first of a new, occasional feature at Cafe Hayek. I’ll call it “Economic Exercises.” It’s an opportunity for readers to exercise their chops at using the economic way of thinking to expose the errors in assertions made about economic phenomena. So, readers, have fun exercising your economics chops in the comments section!

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The inaugural exercise is from this post supporting Tucker Carlson’s recent claim that the availability of government welfare benefits not tied to work requirements enables Amazon and other employers of low-skilled workers to pay their workers less than they’d pay in the absence of these welfare benefits. The flawed assertion is this one [typo corrected]:

If government welfare benefits were not available, fewer people would apply for the low wage job, because they couldn’t live on it. With a lower supply of workers, demand for those remaining would increase and wages rise. So Carlson is right.

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