True credit cards aren't necessarily a bad thing if used right. However the business model itself tends to be pretty predatory towards the financially illiterate and the poor. The interest rates are extremely high when you do accumulate debt and the minimum payment plans the companies recommend are designed to increase your debt and leave you paying off the bills forever.

There are times when going into debt is necessary. But the rise of these payday loan type schemes betrays a deeper problem with American society and that is the decline of family and community organizational structures. Optimally when someone has a hard spot in life family and neighbors often will chip in to help with groceries and the like. We'd do this in church whenever a member had an accident or sudden death in the family. However as our society becomes more atomized and normal social relations are usurped in replacement with online organizational structures the poor and vulnerable become easier targets for profiteering.

Debt is not something that many poor people understand well. Many people have a sense of honor and wish to do the right thing, I assure you the banks holding your debt have no such reservations. I knew someone who paid into their upside down mortgage for years pleading with the bank to refinance but continued to faithfully make the payments while the bank give them the cold shoulder. I said simply, the bank will bleed you dry until you have nothing left to pay, then they will take the house and leave you with nothing. It is better now to not pay and then ask for refinancing, they might agree or might say no, but your choices are only these, stop paying and gamble on refinancing, you'll either keep the house or the money you've not paid yet. Pay faithfully, lose both.

This person was stupid and chose the later option citing worries about credit score. The credit score is forfeit in either situation. But why do you care if the institutions that are bleeding you dry like you or not?