Lol that's not how getting rich actually works. People get quickly used to new income, a bit better phones, clothing, cars, vacations etc. Plus 50% increase doesn't actually translate to 50% net income, taxes % go up in most western world pretty steeply, so the jump is not that big.

This isn't valid for 100% of the folks obviously, but say 90% fall into this trap one way or the other. It is paradoxically easiest for folks already burdened with ie mortgage, because usually the motivation to pay it back sooner trumps the need for some extra gadgets and to show off.

You know what's funny? Their overall long term happiness and life satisfaction doesn't improve a bit. In fact, in many cases it goes down due to ie extra worries about good investments, plus you earn cash by doing extra work.

Myself I increased my net income compared to my first full time IT job more than 20x in last 15 years, and I can tell you happiness comes from different place. Money just help a tiny bit on the path to it, that's all. Some folks, especially those competitive that article talks about, will never be truly happy. Of course is you live in like US with utterly broken healthcare, in some cases money can actually mean saved/improved life, but that's a bit special use case.