You can of course build credit by paying your electric and water bills on time each month. And you can get a credit card with a low limit just about anywhere. No fees, cash back in many cases, use it and build credit. If you aspire to owning a home someday, it will be important.
And of course getting a credit card is not somehow forcing anyone to accept a loan, that premise is absurd.
So I think the bolded part is somewhat interesting. Whether or not it's true, there is a sense that to take an important life step (kinda), and have access to one of the most bedrock wealth-building paths in our society, you have to tangle with a financial instrument that is designed to pillage the finances of those who use it.
The fact is, many of the convenient features credit cards once offered are now available with much less risk (well, give or take the fact it's build on the credit card infrastructure, which gets philosophical). In our modern society, if you actually need that kind of credit, you almost assuredly shouldn't be using it. If you get caught in either a moment of irresponsibility, calamity or ignorance of how the instrument functions, they'll ruin your finances. And the companies that operate them are literally built on doing that.
This isn't to say that there isn't a need for some way to prove financial responsibly. But we don't need to attach any moral rectitude to the credit card industry. Those things are designed at their base to drain people. They might make it a game with rewards, or get cast as part of building a stable financial life, but their bread is buttered by putting people in bad spots and squeezing them.
(I should say this, I had a really low debt/low trackable credit lifestyle through much of my 20s. I used a debit card instead of a credit card. I lived in places with roommates or consolidated bills, so I was rarely on power or cable bills. I paid rent every month, though roommate stuff was often not documented. And in truth, I lived a very stable financial life, and people still explained, “No, BAB, you need to borrow someone’s money, for the credit score and your future.” Think about how wild that is. I had a friend who bought a car from a family member. You can handle that all sorts of ways. Instead, they went to a bank and got a loan, with monthly payments and everything. Why? “To build my credit.” We’re somehow attaching moral good to going into debt.
Also, for fun, your credit score is five parts
Payment history - What we’ve talked here, 35 percent
Amount owed/credit utilization - If I’m running $2,000 a month on my credit card, this looks better if I have $10,000 in limit instead of $4,000, even if I’m paying more for the former number, 30 percent
Length of credit history - This encourages you to start going into debt early and to keep different lines active
Credit mix - This just means I need to borrow from a few different sets of folks 10 percent
New credit - This dings you for borrowing from a bunch of sources all at ones, 10 percent)
