Bankruptcies Increase 11.9 Percent

America’s bankruptcy numbers are climbing again, and the comment section is treating it like a mix of economic alarm bell and full-on blame game. New court data says filings jumped 11.9% over the past year, rising from 529,080 to 591,850 cases. That includes both businesses and regular people, with non-business filings making up the huge majority. Yes, it’s up sharply — but one camp in the comments is already waving this off with a shrug: we’re just going back to normal after the weird pandemic years. As one poster put it, this has been “steadily increasing for five years,” while another argued it was even higher before Covid and today’s numbers are still nowhere near the scary old peaks of the 2010 era.

But the spicier crowd came ready with theories. One commenter said they remembered research tying bankruptcy rises to states that loosened gambling laws, basically tossing casinos and sports betting into the villain role. Another said the real monster is much less glamorous: credit cards. They described small claims court as a parade of unpaid card debt, with banks often winning by default when people don’t even show up. That, plus average card interest rates topping 24% according to the Wall Street Journal, had readers fuming.

And then came the most blistering line of all: “Are we the first state to openly care more about our rich than the people who live here?” That’s the mood in one sentence — part despair, part rage, part dark joke. The numbers are the news, but the comments turned it into a referendum on debt, gambling, banks, and who the system really protects.