Huh? The article basically confirms that small things are worth more happiness than many fold increases in salary. The one silver bullet seems like the cognitive defect being debunked.
I think society has changed a bit in terms of network effects and how much you had compared to a fixed group was more significant to both you and them when the original study was done.
Sure, but a cursory reading of this article stokes the temporary impoverished billionaire who think of future wealth in a way largely interchangeable with religious views on heaven...
It actually seems to say that disvomforts required to earn a lot of money would make you less happy than earning a good amount with less effort and it generally won't make up for more relevant factors in happiness. I.e. an easy tenure would make someone happier than being a law partner earning 4 times more.
There may be other things than money that make people happy!
But I agree with fairity that a lot of the appeal of this pop-science junk idea "$75k is all you need" was "haha, those rich people aren't actually any happier than me, in fact they're making dumb choices because more money is a dumb thing to pursue".
It's just not true. Much richer people are in fact very likely to be happier than you. Not 100% of the time, because money doesn't solve all human problems, but 10x more money solves a huge fraction of problems for basically everyone, and people who aren't rich are just fooling themselves a lot of the time.
I think society has changed a bit in terms of network effects and how much you had compared to a fixed group was more significant to both you and them when the original study was done.