I mean, for some people, that’s really not a priority, I’ve seen it plenty of times where people get by just fine being able to read but not dissect the text, tax papers are broken into simple clauses and with clear instructions, if that’s a problem you can hire someone, if you’re reading online articles you probably wither don’t care enough to verify or trust the source because you chose to read that article, there’s plenty of other ways to get your news, like TV or audio, those have the same problems as written news.

Now of course a good education is important, but If you’re a redneck living in the sticks and not really concerned about things beyond your sphere and your car, and able to navigate polite society, I would argue that’s your perogative. You’re an adult and you have found your place in life just fine you have good friends, a good job and , a 7th grade reading level simply isn’t that important. A 6th grade level is still pretty competent, hell, you could still probably even get through college with that, albeit with some troubl.

saying “no need to read whatsoever” implies half of people are straight up illiterate. They can read just fine, they just won’t be parsing literary elements or huge multiple paragraph spanning articles if they don’t want to