I think about 98% of the population are what I'd call statistically and economically illiterate. Basic economics should be a mandatory lesson at school, but unless you picked the class you can leave without even understanding the law of supply and demand. And then politicians, whose job is mainly to interfere with economic activity, blast these people with statistics (the significance of which they barely understand) about the economy, in order to secure their votes and Run the Fucking Country.
Meanwhile, people leave school and, regardless of profession, find themselves doing largely the same thing: sitting in front of a computer in an office. The productivity of virtually every job in the country depends in part on the employee's ability to use a computer. But unless they picked computing as a class (and, hell, even then), they'll have absolutely no clue how to really use a computer to your advantage, ie. to program it.
My suggestion: teach maths (which is already a mandatory subject) using computers and scripting languages. Let students practice abstraction to make computation/calculation easier; and then get them to model tougher problems and tackle them. Pick these problems from the realm of economics and finance, thereby building knowledge of another domain simultaneously (the only reason I understand what 'hire purchase' is is because my textbooks used it for exercises).
By the time they leave school, these kids will be no strangers to writing macros. In their further education and in their desk jobs, this will prove enormously convenient. Single handedly it could boost the GDP by a % or two (ok, I just made that figure up, but having worked in offices you all must have seen how inefficient the workflows are, and how one whizkid can make a big difference). It would even be useful in totally different disciplines. For instance in the study of literature, textual analysis by computer can prove very useful - finding all the references to a certain thing or instances of a certain word often shows deep patterns in the text. On my literature course only one professor/lecturer was doing this (he said it was particularly useful for Dickens), but he was definitely one of best in the department.