>Hardcoding dollar amounts into law isn't so bad because future laws can update them. Sure, but we all know that never happens until a sufficient number of eas

>Hardcoding dollar amounts into law isn't so bad because future laws can update them. Sure, but we all know that never happens until a sufficient number of easy to feel sorry for people get screwed real hard. Those people are getting needlessly screwed because the legislators were lazy. For example, most states have felony charges as an option for vandalism over a certain dollar amount, in some states these dollar amounts are low. This results in teenagers getting threatened with felonies (and the charges inevitably stick sometimes) because cleaning up their mess cost a few hundred bucks. That is a level of draconian-ness that is not ok in a free society.