Income inequality really matters - here's why

The wonderful site TED.com has posted this video of a very thought-provoking speech by Richard Wilkinson, author of The Spirit Level, and contributor to The Equality Trust:

The key premise of this talk is that many key statistics on societal differences between countries do not correlate with GDP per capita. But they do correlate very well with a scale of economic inequality - how much richer are the richest 20% of the population than the poorest 20%? 

The relationships between social inequity and performance against many key social values or issues is remarkable. And Australia is definitely not doing too well in many of them.

Here are just a few: