Why Is Andrew Sullivan Innumerate?

Maybe because he's comfortable being innumerate?  How about this:

Jonathan Wai notices a double standard:

I'll be the first to admit that my math skills are worse than when I was in the seventh grade.  That's probably why I ended up as a psychologist rather than a mathematician.  However, I don't think being willing to admit you are bad at math is limited to lawyers and psychologists, it's pretty much everyone.  In fact, I've noticed that it's quite socially acceptable to say that I'm not good at math.  On the other hand, I would never admit that I was bad at reading because, well, that would just make me look really stupid.
Which clearly raises the question: Why is it socially acceptable to say that you're bad at math but not socially acceptable to say you're bad at reading?

Maybe because math is useless to the vast majority of us.

No, math is very useful for all of us.  It doesn't exactly take a rocket scientist to figure out that most of the bad mortgages were bound to default, because the math of compounding interest said they weren't going to work out.  Likewise, interest-only loans, or negative amortization loans were obviously a bad idea, because assuming house prices would continue to rise when they had been rising at 3 or 4 times wage increases is stupid.  And why does Sullivan not realize that the Ryan budget plan is complete horseshit?  Probably because math is useless in his erroneous opinion.  Fucking English majors.