This sounds as ridiculous as making the argument that everyone should not learn to read. Some people may feel like learning to read will make them more money,

This sounds as ridiculous as making the argument that everyone should not learn to read. Some people may feel like learning to read will make them more money, so these people shouldn't learn to read, they will be wasting their time! Some people may want to learn to read because they remember those awesome bedtime stories, and would like to read them to themselves, these people are wasting their time too because they just want to learn to read to escape reality! And so on... Just because someone has one silly motivation to learn to read, doesn't mean it will be a waste of time acquiring the skill, because it has many applications beyond the original motivation. Programming is the same thing, and since so many things rely on code, it may be just as important in the future as knowing how to read. At the very least, learning to code is empowering, and its hard to imagine someone suffering negative consequences from learning this skill.