Others already replied strongly enough to this especially the comparison part, I'll add one thing.

On late Sunday evening, before the final results came in, on the (private) RTL television channel, there was the SPIEGEL TV report. Most of the show was the TV crew strolling around in Berlin in the last 24 hours before election, asking all kinds of people about the election. Some was grotesque, some was laughable (like some disco kids), but one was sobering and depressing.

That one was with a jobless and (I didn't catch the beginning, but apparently) incapacitated father, who was directly hit by the Harz IV cuts. He explained, falling into tears in the process, that it is really bad, but not as bad as it will be in a few years: because now, he and the other people hit like him still can get on with their daily lifes by selling off their properties - TV, furniture etc. But when they sold off everything, it's over.

You seem new(ly active) on Eurotrib so you may not know me, so hereby I tell you that I am a Hungarian who lived for two years in Germany, but due to several factors (among them: apatriotism, environmentalism, complete disenchantment with each of the two small and two large parties in the Hungarian parliament - where the formation of a two-party system centrists seem to desire is far progressed -, strong affinity to some policies/parties/persons in German politics, intention to one day move there or to Austria), continued to keep a very close eye on German politics. In the German political landscape, I am most close to the Greens but second closest to the Left Party, but not until this clip did I realise what these 'reforms' mean in practice. (Even tough we already had that stuff here in Hungary and I can see the results.)

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}