If you click through to the research behind the "commute" item, you'll see that it concluded that other things -- like an increased salary -- can indeed compens

If you click through to the research behind the "commute" item, you'll see that it concluded that other things -- like an increased salary -- can indeed compensate for a long commute. The interesting thing that the research uncovered is that people are strongly biased to underestimate the effect of commute time relative to other factors. For example, their survey found that people with effectively no commute were about as happy as people with a one-hour commute who made 40% more. So, yeah, the article is wrong to say that things like a bigger house or better job "just don't work". But they almost certainly won't work as well as people expect them to.