For America specifically, it is somehow worse.

It took 25% of the nation being out of work to, not revolt, but popularly elect someone willing to to spend a little government money on healthcare and welfare.

So it will get much worse before Americans finally read a book and figure out we should maybe do something different.

This claim is simply false. The cause of bankruptcy in the U.S. has been extensively studied and absolutely none of the criteria you list comes even close to the number 1 reason that people in lower or middle class declare bankruptcy: medical bills.

Bankruptcy at this point is just a way to signal to creditors not to lend more money to this individual. As you said alimony, child support, student loans, restitution are a must so the filing simply is a formal notice that "every penny this person ever earns is already earmarked, heed this warning before lending"

What restitution is the average american on the hook for these days?

That's a relatively new idea. It was fundamental to the American and French revolutions, and it was brand new at the time. (The Americans were heavily cribbing off French thinkers, though it took most of a century for the French to implement it.)

It's been the basic claim of liberal democracies for the past 250 years, and they were so successful that people thought it would become universal. But it reached a peak around 30 or 40 years ago -- right about the time that the Soviet Union fell and the "tech age" really got going.

The US in particular saw that as victory for America, and in particular victory for its wealthy class. So it has been leading everything away from liberal democracy.

So obvious I don't know why you had to say it