Americans be like

Basically there's some opaque formula companies use to figure out your score based on how often you use your credit cars/take out loans, how regularly you repay them, etc. This in turn affects your ability to get loans. Like if you want to buy a house or a car, they'll check your credit score, and if it's not high enough then they won't float you, etc.

Yogthos answer is great, To add more context, and be a bit more negative... the credit score effectively incentivises spending a lot of money and taking out a lot of loans, and by taking out a lot of money and by paying them off, you get better credit, which means only the people who can take on big loans and pay them off get better credit. Basically only rich people have good credit, which means basically only rich people can buy houses and cars and things like that. It perpetuates a cycle for the rich getting richer and the poor staying poor.

Remember, in America, houses are an investment. You can use them to collect rent and, in general, line should go up, so your investment will gain in value over time on average.

To expand on what Yogthos and RedClouds already said, the U.S. "consumer credit" system is also, effectively, mandatory participation from birth and you don't ever get a choice in it later on. There are multiple private agencies who track and maintain records of U.S. citizens' credit history. A typical person here will do business or apply for jobs at many companies over their lifetime which will check these credit histories and/or submit that person's payment records to the agencies as part of the business (like mobile phone service contracts, credit cards and car loans, corporate landleeches and your monthly rent history, etc. etc.).

I think the way it works is, the first time you do business with a place that reports to credit agencies when you turn 18 or whatever, your identifying info is sent over and your personal credit history begins. It's like having an account created on your behalf at a shady, unaccountable business from which your data can't and won't ever be purged (bonus: your personal info has a good chance of getting stolen from said agencies and sold on TOR forums every few years or so).

If a credit check is part of the employment process at some job, their HR department is using it to determine how responsible and trustworthy an applicant is expected to be. Banks and finance jobs always do this as well as other non-finance but high level jobs. Someone with large amounts of current debt or history of missing payments on rent won't get hired at such jobs because they're considered bad with money and desperate or irresponsible, a liability for theft and embezzlement as the employer would see it. Same principle when applying for places to live, low credit score or red marks in payment history = no housing for you.

The system has a bunch of stupid guidelines for maintaining a high 'credit score' that are taught as sage life advice in a lot of high school, home economics classes here, probably because this shit is so deeply ingrained in every aspect of life that it's inescapable. That 'credit score' is a three-digit number ranging from about 500 to 850, it's often listed with some minimum required score on housing applications and similar, it is used as a quick judgment on your history of borrowing from and repaying capitalist entities, higher number being better. It's calculated by a an algorithm and nobody knows what the algorithm is because it's an industry secret. The score is updated regularly and we can get a free copy once per year of everything on our personal credit reports from each of the three "main" credit agencies, if we request one.

Unless you're so wealthy you can buy everything with cash, having no credit history at all or a bad credit history can significantly impact your life comfort and ability to find housing, so we are forced to play this fucked up game.

The CIA agent who came up with the idea clearly knew what would upset their audience the most.

Yeah, one exists nationwide (credit score) and the other was some proposed municipality plan that didn't go anywhere

China's Orwellian Social Credit Score Isn't Real

Yes yes, all buildings in China are made of cardboard and entire cities collapse overnight! It's true! I work with the CI- I mean a trusted source, like RFA!

On a side note, I'm pretty sure not even RFA would say something as obviously false as this, but I guess their propaganda knows no bounds.

Americans own their own land? I thought that a lot of them are in spiralling home loan debts( among other debts) for most of their lives, and the majority of the rest are renting, and can't even dream of even owning property. Not the rich, of course.

That's not even taking into account the massive homeless population that the US criminalises and leaves to fend for themselves and just die.

So...how is that better than being provided the security of housing that China is doing?

This is a misconception bordering on a fucking lie. For all intents and purposes, in China you do own the land you purchase. The 70 year lease is mostly a formality. The government owns all the land legally speaking, much the same as literally any other country on Earth. Regardless of what a piece of paper says, the land is yours. The 70 year lease is just so the government can keep tabs on all the land in the country for different purposes, such as organization, urban planning, taxation, regulating land use and waste, and the state will compensate you for more than your home is worth, if the land is required for development, ala imminent domain.

Ironic that despite officially being a lease, in China you own your land more than you do in the U.S., which is a blanket nightmarish patchwork of banks and home owners associations.