I'm sure you have some caveats to that - like learning to read, and doing basic arithmetic. And that's the issue here. It's the 'curse of knowledge' again.
For anybody that doesn't already know how, "learning to program" mostly means learning a bit more about how computers work. And universal computer literacy would be a great thing, much as universal literacy has been.
I'm guessing that some people thought "if everybody can read and write, then we'll all become educated and be able to write great novels". Unsurprisingly, that didn't happen, but other huge benefits were accrued. People could go to the library and check whether that thing they were told was actually true. They had a cheap and simple means of permanently storing and retrieving information. Health, legal, and financial advice can be distributed much more widely.
So I totally agree with you that "everybody should learn to program" sounds very similar to "everybody can write a novel". It's wrong. But "everybody should be computer literate" is a very worthwhile cause.
What's included in basic computer literacy? Things that help people make better decisions every day of their lives. I know people that waste money, or put themselves into very difficult situations, through not understanding some of the following:
* An understanding of what happens when you turn a computer on or off. What's the difference between Office and Windows, and between OSX and Windows? Between iOS and an iPhone? I know people that have upgraded their 1-year-old computer, because they wanted the latest version of Windows.
* Basic security. Why is leaving a list of plain text passwords on your desktop (or even worse, on a Facebook note) a bad idea? Why should you avoid installing that funny game that comes with a cute emoticon toolbar?
* Difference between a markup language, a programming language, and a database. How do these systems communicate with each other? You've probably heard of people hiring a £1,000 per day IT consultant to make something bold on their homepage. Similar point about email, internet, web, and browsers. You could probably throw in the difference between being able to install Wordpress, and code a CMS from scratch here too, so that people don't pay £2K for a vanilla install.
It's fine to say "ask somebody who does know" but when you're totally clueless, it's difficult to know what questions to ask which person.