Quite consistently, at least in Canada and the US, welfare is claimed to cause dependency, lazyiness, and reduce the ambition of the receivers WHILE we are paying for it.

I'm saying BOTH that it's good for people AND that it's affordable are still in dispute and that the claims are clearly not obvious.

Sure, and my argument is that proving that welfare recipients who temporarily received a greater subsidy than other welfare recipients self-reported greater levels of happiness than welfare recipients on less money does absolutely nothing to undermine arguments about welfare dependency.

The arguments - with varying degreees of plausibility - are all of the form 'long term welfare dependency is unhealthy for society' not, 'welfare recipients would be happier if their welfare income was lower'.

Ok. Why are you making that argument to me? I never asserted the opposite? Why are disagreeing with a point I never made?

You disagreed with someone up the chain that the experiment's conclusions were "obvious". Since all the experiment appears to have found is that recipients of temporarily more generous benefit entitlements self report less stress and greater confidence than those who receive less generous entitlement, even most hardened opponents of the welfare state would agree that such conclusions were obvious.