I agree, but I suspect fewer people would make the mistake. Partly because more people would actually do the math, and partly because there's no immediately attractive wrong answer involving "98/100" and "100 lbs". There's still a somewhat attractive wrong answer of multiplying 98/100 by 14 lbs, but there's one less reason to make that mistake.
This seems like the kind of thing that could be tested with a study. Ask a few hundred people each version of the problem (ideally filtering out anyone who has seen the problem before), and see how many get each version right.
(Potato paradox problem paradox: You ask 100 people to solve the potato paradox. 99% of them get the answer wrong. You drop people who answered incorrectly until you have a group where 98% got the answer wrong. How many people are left?)
Gerd Gigerenzer asks roughly similar questions of a wide range of people - mostly medical professionals. It's scary how wrong people are, especially considering that this is information they're using to medicate you or operate on you.
This seems like the kind of thing that could be tested with a study. Ask a few hundred people each version of the problem (ideally filtering out anyone who has seen the problem before), and see how many get each version right.
(Potato paradox problem paradox: You ask 100 people to solve the potato paradox. 99% of them get the answer wrong. You drop people who answered incorrectly until you have a group where 98% got the answer wrong. How many people are left?)