> For me, having no debt is the gold standard of being a trustable person to lend money to. You'll be the only company I'll owe money, surely I won't have any issue paying you! But no: in the US system you need to constantly borrow money to prove that you're good at paying it back...

The "peak" situation for someone in the US credit card system is a bunch of cards that have been open for years, no new cards, a single used credit card with a low balance relative to credit limit, and an instalment loan/mortgage.

But yeah, people need to put at least a dollar on one of their cards every month to maintain this.