In the US, at least, this is possibly because a not-insignificant number of people have zero or even negative net assets:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_in_the_United_States
It's hard to comprehend something you've never had (or, in some cases, even imagined you could have). I have friends who live paycheck to paycheck. For them, budgeting, saving, investing, long-term financial planning, etc. are completely foreign ideas. Part of this is an intergenerational legacy of poverty: their parents weren't in a position to think about these things either, so they were never raised to think about it - and so, like many North Americans, they spend money they don't have on things they don't need, work punishing hours at close to minimum wage to make up the difference, and are left with no time / energy afterwards to learn better.
To compound the issue: even if they did have the time / energy to learn better, they can't secure the kind of credit that would enable them to quickly pay off their high-interest debts. It's deeply frustrating to watch, but this is what one step above abject poverty looks like. You have a lot of (well-meaning!) people telling you "just do X", without realizing that X often requires you have up-front capital, good credit, spare time, or any of the other things people in more stable financial situations take for granted. (I've been that person a few times, advising them to do things that to me are common sense - only to find out that, for them, those "common sense" steps are impossible.)
In that sort of environment, it's meaningless to ask someone what the time value of money is; they have more serious structural problems with their finances that no amount of high-level philosophizing will solve.