The whole hoopla around the felony status is just a proxy. when you commit a bunch of felonies there's all sorts of coded in law and process (sentencing guidelines) that apply (as well as KPIs, cops and prosecutors care about being able to say they put felons away) so you can't really be habitually felonious very much without winding up behind bars.

Below the felony threshold the system is far more free to let you go back out and keep doing what you're doing.

So the actual dollar threshold of felony theft is really just a crappy (because not all states go equally hard on non-felony crime) proxy for the rate of recidivism.