A few years ago in response to pressure from the lending industry, Congress passed the Bankruptcy Reform Act, irreverently nicknamed the BARF Act by practitioners. One argument in support of the BARF Act was that consumers were abusing the remedy of bankruptcy and in some way were morally at fault for filing bankruptcy in the first place.
I recall something that one of my professors said in class, and which I’ve heard from other sources, to the effect that most consumers file bankruptcy not because they are poor planners (though some are) but because they’ve lost their jobs, faced large uninsured medical bills, become divorced, or had some catastrophic loss.
In the last few years we’ve seen several large corporations file petitions in bankruptcy, not because of catastrophic loss, but because they can’t figure out how to run at a profit. Management stays in place.
I’ve not yet figured out why consumers who file bankruptcy demonstrate moral failings, but corporations who file bankruptcy don’t.