It’s not difficult to build credit in the U.S. without resorting to maintaining debt, nor accepting unnecessary loans. The credit scoring models in place strongly favor many open, revolving accounts, but also favor the continual paying off of those accounts and maintaining zero balances on the majority of one’s revolving accounts. The scoring models favor low utilization of large amounts of available credit — that the credit in question needs to be in the form of a loan or a fixed line is false.

It’s accurate to say that the U.S. operates on credit moreso than it does on cash, but the rating methods genuinely favor those who have the means to manage credit wisely and pay off revolving balances in full, which is antithetical to the notion of societal “regressions”.