It's crazy how US history basically stops getting taught right after WW2. At least that's my experience.

1. Many many districts do teach you how a mortgage works and how taxes work.

2. If you learned algebra you learned how to do your taxes and how a mortgage works 2a. Literally pages of problems in these classes cover these topics specifically. 2b. Taxes is almost all just filling out a worksheet - something which schools demonstrate literally every day.

3. Explicitly learning these things school is not generally a good use of time because:

• Students won't find them any more relevant than other content.
• Learning requires constant reinforcement over years. Learning something once that you won't need for several years to up to a decade later is a recipe for a waste of time - people will just forget by the time it is relevant. If you took a high school biology test a decade after you graduated you are going to fail it. These should be taught immediately before use and not a second sooner for this reason.
• These are beaucratically defined, and are not based in objective fact. This is important because the government can change either of these processes literally tomorrow and everything you learned and everything the school system invested in would be almost entirely worthless.

4. Teaching modern politics is a recipe for extreme use of the school system for propaganda vs skill and knowledge development.

I see, thanks for explaining that, I do agree that out education system does need an overhaul. I remember learning about interest both compound and simple and the type of bank accounts but that was only 1 day. Stuff like this shouldn't be taught in just math class though. There should be a life skills class and not just a lesson. Home ec doesn't cut it.