Starting in 2000, if the world spent it's war budgets on feeding the hungry & housing the homeless, could poverty be history?

It isn't enough to just throw money at the problem of poverty. There has been a lot of money already thrown at the problem and it hasn't gone away (admittedly not as much money as you're talking about! ).

In some cases, aid money has actually caused problems, for example, where people have become dependent on aid and have stayed in places that can't support them naturally, rather than moving somewhere they could live independently. Improving infrastructure, allowing people to work for their own wellbeing through support systems that concentrate on things like micro-finance (loaning small amounts of money to businesses and individuals in developing worlds), and yes, research and money spent on eradicating diseases like malaria and TB and on education etc. These things will help. Freedom of information, with easy access to books, computers, the internet, etc, that would also help.

A crack down on corruption would go a very long way to improving standards world-wide. But poverty is a widespread, organic problem, that requires many different grassroots solutions.To some extent, we are already using enough money to solve the problem, we just need to come up with the right solution. So, while it would probably be a good thing to spend that money on helping rather than hurting, lack of money is not exactly the problem, and more money isn't necessarily the solution.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.