First of all, this is FlyerTalk! It's not Americans so much in general, it's FTers who want to earn every last mile/point they can, and that requires using a miles/point-earning credit card everywhere possible.

You think €50 is cheap??? That's about $70 or $75, and I pretty much never (in the US) have more than $40 in my wallet, and often just $10 or so. I go MANY MONTHS between using cash for anything other than coin-operated machines (laundry, etc) and giving tips (where the tip is separate from any other payment, eg, an airport parking shuttle driver). Once in a while I visit a museum or park that only takes cash, but typically that means they only charge about $10 or less.

My major US bank (Wells Fargo) only allows me to withdraw I think $300 a time (or is that the lmit per day?), so eating up 1/4 of that in what you call a "small" transaction sure sounds like a lot of cash to me!

Meanwhile, it sounds like you haven't been reading this thread long, because many of the complaints in western Europe are about unmanned gas stations and stuff like that, where paying by card is the only option, and yet they don't take swipe cards! The only way cash can help you in such a case is if you find someone else at the gas station who's willing to use their card if you give them the same amount in cash.

(Again, if you're a local, maybe you know how to avoid these unmanned gas stations. But a foreign traveler with a rental car, they may have gotten lost, underestimated when they'd need gas, etc.)