Exercise 1: Why Unemployment Benefits Need No New Legislation — Possible Solution
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An automatic stabilizer is built directly into a system's own existing
rules in advance, so that its response to a changing economy happens
automatically as a real, direct consequence of conditions changing -
no new decision, vote, or law is required each time it activates.

Unemployment benefits work exactly this way: the eligibility rules and
payment amounts are already set in existing law, before any specific
economic downturn ever occurs. When a recession hits and more people
genuinely lose their jobs, more people automatically become eligible
for benefits under those already-existing rules - the SPENDING on
unemployment benefits rises on its own, purely because more real people
now qualify under rules that were already in place, not because
lawmakers passed any new legislation in response to that specific
downturn.

This is precisely why it counts as expansionary fiscal policy without
requiring discretionary action: government spending on benefits rises
automatically exactly when the economy needs it most (during a
downturn, when unemployment is rising), and falls automatically as the
economy recovers and fewer people qualify - all without a single new
law needing to be debated or passed in response to the changing real
conditions.

ANSWER: Unemployment benefits require no new legislation because the
eligibility rules and payment levels are already fixed in existing
law - when a recession causes more people to genuinely lose their
jobs, spending rises automatically as more people qualify under those
already-existing rules, with no new legislative decision needed each
time conditions change.

WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER
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This explains the real mechanism (pre-existing rules automatically
producing a changed outcome) that makes something an automatic
stabilizer, rather than simply restating the definition.