This isn't a surprise at all (how dumb financially people are).
Think about how much of your basic education was dedicated to even learning basic finance - when I was in high school, we had a class called Math of Money (or somethign similar) that was a very, very, very basic class going over different day to day things associated with budgeting, money, etc. Like how to balance a checkbook, how to set up a basic budget based on income, etc.
It was an elective, not a core level class. I had to take 4 years of english/grammar classes, 4 years of science, 4 years of math (none of which were anything that is in the world of finance), 2 years of a foreign language, 4 years of PE classes...and zero requirements for even the most basic of classes involving money, etc. I didn't even hear of the term 401k until I graduated college and got in the real world. I had very little real understanding of interest and how quick it adds up. Didn't know a damn thing about insurance outside of auto insurance and that I had to have it because of Texas law.
I'm sure I use the English knowledge on a daily basis, to some degree. I can tell you that whatever I may have learned in reading The Tale of Two Cities or whatever long ago left my brain. I can't remember I used anything beyond the most basic of science/chemistry and the last time I used any of the Algebra II or calculus level math...was in college.
But I manage money through budgets at work, budgets at home and other things on a daily basis. And that is the subject collectively that had the least amount of effort put into it for the first 22 years of my life and through every year of mandatory schooling.
My mom and dad didn't do a great job teaching me about money either, because we didn't have a lot of it growing up and how much they made was always a secret. I didn't know what our house payments were, what the car payments were, etc. I only knew what dad paid in vehicle insurance because he had me, my mom and my 2 other brothers all on the payroll at one point and his monthly insurance premium was high AF. I had to learn a lot of the basic stuff like how to set up a budget when I was in college, and that was after blowing through 2 semesters worth of savings in 1 semester right when i got there.
Collectively - society does a crap job at teaching the fundamentals of money management and finance. Which means those that do pick it up and understand it and make a living generally have a poorly educated customer, which means it is easier to manipulate them. That isn't an excuse for somebody not learning and at least having a basic understanding of what they are committing themselves to, but the abject lack of education is a fundamental flaw in our education system IMO.