Poverty is the inability to have a long range view of the future. The intense focus on now, on survival, on making the next bill, the next meal, the next salary; the lack of time for taking in perspective to plan the future is what deep poverty looks like. In this regard our collective civilization is in a state of deep poverty although we lie to ourselves that we are rich using artificial criteria like money & GDP. The question to ask is this: is the wellbeing and happiness of mankind and the planet better than it was 500 years ago? We need impact thinkers to rise up to the challenge of creating a new paradigm for measuring human progress for the sake of the wellbeing of our planet and its inhabitants.