Not at all. Back in the 90s, I had an American Express Gold Card, probably the premier travel card at the time. It was expensive, but for my specific situation, the travel benefits were basically making me $500 a year, alot of money for me.

People with good credit have access to better cards. It’s about people who pay their shit on time, not wealth.

And I'd be willing to wager that the ability to pay bills on time might be somewhat correlated to wealth.

What you're giving is a rationalization for why the economic landscape of credit cards looks the way it does, which is useful for understanding it, but not at all the same thing as a justification for that being desirable for society as a whole.

We have a perfectly fine mechanism for making lending cheaper for people who pay on time: Interest rates. There's no economic need for tangling all of that up with rewards/cashback rates.

> It was expensive, but for my specific situation, the travel benefits were basically making me $500 a year, alot of money for me.

While I also greatly benefit from the system myself I still consider it a massive resource sink for society at best, and borderline predatory lending behavior at worst, and would gladly see it disappear the same way it has in the EU.

1) the card is expensive in an upfront way that is difficult for poorer people to justify for playing money games

2) getting the value of the card is contingent on spending more money. A poor person with fewer expenses won’t get nearly as much benefit

3) let’s not ignore the elephant in the room which is credit cards trying everything to get you to make minimum payments to prey on the financially illiterate, which again, are heavily concentrated in the poor

I think it’s not surprising, the wealthy get better access to better everything. They can buy higher quality goods and be more discerning, they get better loan terms. Everything about life is better for those with more money.

This isn’t to say I don’t agree with you.