It's less the availability of credit cards (they're highly available in a good many countries), it's more the assertion that if you're not using a credit card every day, there's something wrong with you. It's the fact that if you're not using a credit card in everyday purchases, you're losing the rewards and so essentially paying more for everything you buy - you're structurally punished for not participating.

Debit cards have much the same protections as credit cards in much of Europe. It's more likely that any benefits your bank wants to give you will come attached to your bank account (in return for depositing a certain amount of money per month) than that they'll push a credit card on you. Interchange fees are low enough (0.3% for credit cards and 0.2% for debit) that there's not much they can profitably provide, anyway - which means our prices aren't quite so inflated to cover the expense of serving credit card users.

Credit cards aren't bad, but the system of incentives that leads consumers in the US to believe they're the most rational choice is.

People regularly assert that credit cards are factored into the cost of goods, but I posit that's mostly untrue. The cost of most things, especially "luxury" goods like restaurants, is set by the price the market will bear—not the cost of providing that good. Anecdotally, it's certainly not cheaper that equivalent goods and services are cheaper in Europe despite the lower credit card usage.

It's very common for supermarkets in the UK, for example, to compete on margins on common food - not necessarily packaged/prepared food, but definitely the basics, fruit/vegetables/bread/milk/flour/eggs/etc. People have little loyalty to a specific supermarket and often have 2-3 within reasonable distance, so there's a very strong pressure to keep down the cost on these items - they're pretty much the proverbial widgets. The lower the cost to sell an item, the lower the supermarket can charge. Some supermarkets take technical losses every year, with most having falling profits every year.

This sort of thing affects poor people more than it affects people who are eligible for a credit card with a good rewards program in the first place. I'm sure you really don't care that your potatoes are 2-3% higher in price than they otherwise would be.

Right. The amount a producer can pass on to consumers via a higher price depends on the price elasticity of demand.

Credit cards always have a cost. You get 1.5% to 2% of your money back in rewards for a 3% fee.

In Europe, fees are limited to far below that, and the European debit cards are limited to below 1% in fees.

You don't get rewards from credit cards in that situation. In fact, credit cards always end up losing you money.

Credit cards are the tragedy of the commons - if no one used them, everyone would profit. But as long as some use them, everyone gets an advantage from using them.

> I challenge you to explain why the easy availability of credit and a highly functional credit market is a bad thing instead of throwing out blanket statements like that credit scores are "crazy."

Because it is risk. You have insanely high interest rates, high fees, you have a massive risk, and the security is basically nonexistent.

To pay money online, you usually use a standardized API that uses proper cryptography, and signs with a key embedded in your device or your debit card on a reader.

With a credit card, you pay with a simple number that anyone can just steal, and if you don't take care, you're fucked.

> With a credit card, you pay with a simple number that anyone can just steal, and if you don't take care, you're fucked.

You seem to deeply understand credit cards. There is practically no risk to using them. As a consumer, your fraud liability is zero and entirely shifted to the merchant.

Of course you should pay off the bill every month. I never pay interest, rewards more than cover any fees I pay (I average 4-5% return on credit card spend), and I really don't know what risk you're talking about.

> As a consumer, your fraud liability is zero and entirely shifted to the merchant.

If you have one with chip+PIN, as all in Europe, 100% of liability is with the customer.

So you have to check the statement every month, go through a lengthy process to appeal false charges, and end up not getting your money back either. Especially as you have to deal with your bank to get the money back instead of the CC company here, and the bank has a far easier process for reversing debit transfers than CC bills.

> If you have one with chip+PIN, as all in Europe, 100% of liability is with the customer.

Thankfully I don't have chip and pin, yet another reason I actually vastly prefer the American system to European.

You seem to just be providing examples of why the European system is worse for consumers, not proving in any way why it's better.

I am providing examples why the American system is worse in a European legal context.

You don't want CCs either. CCs solve security by having someone simply pay for every time a fuckup happens, instead of using cryptography to prevent them in the first place.

  > In Europe, fees are limited to
  > far below that, and the 
  > European debit cards are
  > limited to below 1% in fees.

I have frequently seen this claim made (that European credit card fees are low), then when I go and investigate it, I discover the source is referring to Europeans limits on interchange fees, not the merchant fees which dominate the cost of accepting credit cards.

In the end, I always find the costs are broadly similar in the EU and the US.

Debit cards are widely used in Europe (maybe not in Germany), but people, when they want credit just goes to the bank and take a loan or something like that.