Mathematics is a language, it provides an unambitious way of explaining processes that is (relatively) independent of general purposes languages (e.g. English, Mandarin, etc).

Without a good grounding in maths you're barring yourself from all but the lowest rungs of Science, Engineering and associated disciplines like Computer Science. Even the great cash cow that is the City of London requires a decent knowledge of maths in most high paying positions (except Risk Manager it would seem).

Not that there's anything wrong with taking other paths: a good liberal arts education can go a long way. But just as scientists benefit from skills other than pure number crunching (the ability to explain their results to non-experts for a start), everyone benefits from understanding basic (i.e. A-Level) maths. If people understood compound interest maybe we wouldn't have such a problem with personal debt levels.