> The main finding of our reanalysis of MK’s study is that the shape of the distribution of happiness changes—slightly, but systematically—as income rises. The same increases of income have different effects on the happy and on the unhappy regions of the distribution. In the low range of incomes, unhappy people gain more from increased income than happier people do. In other words, the bottom of the happiness distribution rises much faster than the top in that range of incomes. The trend is reversed for higher incomes, where very happy people gain much more from increased income than unhappy people do. The upper part of the happiness distribution rises with log(income) at an accelerated rate in that range, while the lower 20% is almost completely flat.
So it sounds like this study is saying people who are unhappy and have low income or are already happy and have high incomes will become a lot happier with more income. The lower end would be consistent with people are are unhappy because of the lack of income, and I don't think would apply very much to people one promotion away from a $500k raise. For the other end, it seems like it would be consistent that people who have high incomes and are happy might be just as likely to become happier from other things instead of more income; maybe they're just people who are naturally happy whenever something good happens regardless of what it is, and because they have high incomes, they don't need to worry about existential life issues most of the time.
In other words, none of this seems to heavily contradict what I said, other than the caveat that if you are already happy, you might still be happier with more income (but we don't know that you might be just as happy from getting a new hobby or spending more time with your family instead of getting promoted). Even without that caveat, it does not seem like your link is nearly enough to make a reasonable argument that I'm dense for happening to cite an effect from an article that, according to your link, was a valid result according to both of the authors.