Comment by reaperman
4 days ago
$10,000 doesn't seem particularly large. Just a few years ago, I bought an old truck for $12,000 in one hundred dollar bills.
If you're worried about large drug transactions, a kilogram of cocaine would cost around $20,000-40,000 in the USA, and significantly more in Europe (actual wholesale price for bulk purchase, not inflated police figures that price it at $150/gram).
Personally I think one month of apartment rent should not be considered a suspiciously large amount of cash, and it should be fine to buy a car from a friend using actual cash. I really don't see the downside of leaving those things legal without a threat of civil asset forfeiture.
$12,000 is an out of the ordinary large amount of money - that's why you can note it as a special instance. It's certainly not something you keep on yourself every day, right? I'm not arguing that people should be limited in what money they carry, I'm saying there is a normal range of cash, it's not as nebulous as argued.
That person might note it as a special instance, but 'normal' varies wildly from person to person, and 4.5% of America is unbanked entirely. Setting any limit on the amount of money someone is allowed to carry essentially criminalizes poverty.
I might not carry that much every day, or ever, but somebody somewhere in the country (probably dozens or hundreds) will have a legal reason to do so on any given day. IMO this is similar to the laws that allow prosecutors to charge (and win!) drug offenders for "distribution" for just having a large amount of a drug. There's a presumption that if you have a brick of weed, you're a drug dealer. Well, maybe, but shouldn't that have to be proven in court?