How do you know this? Sure, if you make the assumption that the before this one change, the world worked perfectly in line with the kind of simplifying assumptions that you might see in an Econ 101 class, then that would be true, but then, if the world worked that way, this raise wouldn't have happened.
Basic economics certainly does not claim that every product will be sold at the equilibrium price. In fact, if that were so, then it wouldn't work.
In a free market, some products are sold above the equilibrium price, and some are sold below. It's free, because people can offer the product at any price they wish. What basic economics does say is that a price above equilibrium cannot be sustained without some corresponding market advantage.
Actually, neither, I'm saying that the claim made by the post I was responding to doesn't work unless you assume that the general assumptions of Econ 101 and the conclusions drawn from it in terms of overall outcomes are assumed to apply not to overall outcomes but to every individual decision in the marketplace.
Which I agree is ridiculous, which was my point.
That doesn't mean that they weren't providing $70k of market value, unless you assume that (at a minimum):
(1) they were maximimizing their pay in choice of job, and (2) they had perfect knowledge of all the alternatives jobs that they could otherwise have obtained.
These are the kind of assumptions that are typical in Econ 101, but to which real humans do not actually conform, particularly the second.
After all, they were willing to work for $0.