What should the number be, in your opinion?
Stealing is stealing. I don't care if it's a pack of gum. It's stealing.
So that number isn't the gap between stealing and not stealing. It's the felony threshold. So if you steal $949 in goods, it's a misdemeanor, which still has penalties. And the reason it becomes more of culture war theater is because nationally, that number is the 10th lowest, which means CA is the 10th-harshest when it comes to that number.
New Jersey and Illinois have some the lowest numbers ($200 and $500 respectively). Georgia and Alabama are at $1,500. In Texas, a state not known for its softness on crime, I can steal $2,450 and it's not a felony. But Texas isn't discussed as being beset by retail theft, so this number is probably not a great proxy for issues.
What should it be? I'm not totally sure. The difference between a felony and non-felony is mostly (and someone smarter can correct me) that a felony brings with it many more long-term punishments. So rather than shock a person into acting right, it hangs the punishment for this misdeed on much of the rest of their lives. That feels like something I'd want a bit higher standard on (hoping the initial punishment does in fact create the shock, much like you leaving your son in mall jail), but I don't know exactly where to place that.
The actual prongs of this as an issue feel like they come down to a couple things: prosecution (which sort of ties into pretrial detention) and pursuit. And those are also both sticky policy issues.
