'World News' Listens to the American Middle Class

March 18, 2010— -- As ABC's "World News with Diane Sawyer" has focused on the struggles of America's middle class this week, we've heard from thousands of viewers across the country. They are people who are struggling to make mortgage payments, find jobs, and care for their families.

They've weighed in on subjects ranging from banks to unemployment to the very existence of the middle class itself. We've gathered some of those comments below.

Many commentators questioned whether or not America still has a middle class to save.

User SammieB12 wrote on our site, "Pretty soon, there will only be two classes: the rich and the rest of us."

"The middle class should now be called the struggling to survive," wrote 11jeanne.

Others thought that the American dream has already disappeared.

"I don't believe there is a middle class anymore," one user wrote. "It used to be about single homes, 2.5 kids, white picket fences and a mom and dad. That dream is gone... only the rich can afford that now."

Phillip9150 wrote, "There is no middle class anymore, I have been laid off for 8 months now [...] I have no idea what we are going to do when my unemployment runs out."

Others wrote about the shame that comes with the fall from the middle class.

"Back home with mom, at 50 years old I feel like such a failure," broke10 said.

Another viewer wrote in after seeing the soup kitchen they worked at featured on our broadcast.

"The face of hunger is your neighbor," they said. "I can't tell you how many people who are coming into my soup kitchen that once belonged to the middle class. I have actually served food to people I worked with at a previous employer, they were laid off and so was their spouse."

Many middle class Americans wrote us about their struggles to find work.

"Here in Tucson, a restaurant had 8 openings and 200 applicants," wrote wandering41645 on the site.

"We are baby boomers and I think most of the people hurting are baby boomers," said bulldogzig. "We are close to retiring and who wants to hire us?"

Viewers Sound Off on ABC's Series on Middle Class

In a conversation on Skype today, Chicagoan Barry Scott told ABC's Diane Sawyer about his struggles to find work.

"I've put in about 300 applications, I've had about 25 interviews," Scott said. "I've been talking to a company in Australia that is looking at me. I may have to do what a friend of mine is doing. He's working in Dubai, and he comes home every 30 to 60 days to see his family. I may have to do something as crazy as that to try and find a way to get a job."

To Scott, part of the problem is corporate values.

"One thing that is different today than in the days of our grandparents is the sense of no corporate conscience, or a people before profit kind of thing," Scott said. "I understand the business need to make a profit. I want them to make a profit. At what point is there enough?"

That comment was echoed on ABCNews.com by another user.

"It's all about making money... it's not about people anymore," scrappin.mel wrote on the site.

Others used our comment boards to express intense frustration with the Wall Street banks who many say helped to send the country into an economic downward spiral.

"It is time the people financing the bailout also got bailed out," user david_rosseau wrote.