The "psychology" for me is that I know I can basically never afford to retire and maintain shelter, healthcare, and food for my family even if things never got more expensive, and things are guaranteed to get much more expensive.
Always have! Severity of punishment has been repeatedly proven to have little to no effect on deterrence. In the US it is not based on lowering crime or rehabilitating criminals, it's about making money and inflicting punishment.
Who knew if your product was mostly shit people would stop using it?