It is worth repeating that the original paper, by Kahneman and Deaton--the one everyone likes to cite to support the opinion that happiness doesn't increase with salary above $75k--said nothing of the sort, unless you accept a very peculiar understanding of the word "happiness". The paper introduces two concepts, "Emotional Well Being = the quality of a person’s everyday experience such as joy, fascination, anxiety, sadness, anger, and affection", and "Life Evaluation = a person’s thoughts about his or her life (on a longer time scale)." The first one, K&D found, is only affected by money up to $75k a year. The second is improved with more money at all levels. http://wws.princeton.edu/news/Income_Happiness/Happiness_Mon...
So unless you're going to insist that the word "happiness" only pertains to temporary feelings, as opposed to how you feel about your life overall in the long-term, the claim about $75k and happiness never had any basis in data.
So unless you're going to insist that the word "happiness" only pertains to temporary feelings, as opposed to how you feel about your life overall in the long-term, the claim about $75k and happiness never had any basis in data.