> - person needs a vehicle so he can get to a job

You don't need a $30,000 truck (which, again, represents your life savings) to get to work. Just the cost of collision insurance and the cost of flying to Columbus and driving it back to New Orleans would wipe out any putative savings obtained.

Again, I'm not saying the cops should have seized his money. I'm explicitly saying they shouldn't be able to do that. I'm asking if there's a middle ground between "cops can arbitrarily decide to seize any cash you're carrying" (status quo) and "there is no amount of cash that a person can possess which triggers reasonable suspicion of illegal activity" (what many people here seem to be advocating)