The American Innumeracy Epidemic

Whenever I see “Jaywalking” or some similar person-on-the-street interview segment, I ask myself, “Are Americans really this dumb?”
By and large, the answer appears to be “yes.”
Bob Sullivan provides more evidence with a post on Americans’ inability to do basic “real-world” math (note the clever “ameritards” in the URL–I think I’ll start using that). For example:

• Only 42 percent were able to pick out two items on a menu, add them, and calculate a tip.
• Only 1 in 5 could reliably calculate mortgage interest.

Sullivan speculates that this math deficiency “played a major role in the housing bubble and the resulting economic collapse.”
Could things really be [I]that[/I] bad? It’s one thing to need a calculator to figure a tip. But to not understand your basic mortgage terms? That’s dreadful.
If Americans are as mathematically clueless as Sullivan suggests, we’ve got a real problem: people lack a fundamental survival skill. I’m not familiar with today’s public high school curriculum, but perhaps we need to feature more checkbook balancing and less algebra.