Daylight Saving Time is a Waste of Time

Benjamin Franklin came up with the concept for daylight saving time. In the 18th century.

The idea was that a later sunset would cause us to use less fuel in oil lamps. It was a great initiative then, but methinks we are using an outdated idea. Like oil lamps.

More than two centuries later, this biannual perfunctory act still makes us feel groggy for a week, disrupts already tenuous sleep patterns and in some cases, increases traffic accidents.

"Spring forward" is meant to give us an extra hour at the end of the day. Daylight saving changes the clock and not the sun.

The time change does not "add" an extra hour of daylight or sunlight to the day. See below what the American Indians have to say the extra hour.

The "fall back" clock movement is equally unrewarding. People are not gaining an extra hour. In fact, Americans spend an inordinate amount of time changing their clocks.


Daylight Wasting Time

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are 311 million Americans. The average household has a minimum of four timepieces that require manual resetting.

The Census Bureau shows 111 million households, meaning there are approximately 445 million clocks that have to be manually changed. If it takes 10 seconds to change the time on each clock, then Americans spend, collectively, each spring and fall 1.2 million hours changing clocks.

At a minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, that's $18 million.

Russians ahead of Americans?

Recently, Russia canceled daylight saving time for all nine of its time zones because the President decided the potential "stress and illnesses" on biological clocks was too great. Arizona, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Saskatchewan and the U.S. Virgin Islands do not waste time changing clocks either.

A bill to keep Colorado on permanent daylight saving unanimously passed the agriculture committee last year, but according to the ski industry, which "mounted a full-court press to kill the measure, saying it would affect them in the mornings during their peak winter season."

Equally, it would have affected the afternoons during the peak winter season by "adding" an hour of skiing.

The Navaho adage sums it up best, "Only the government would believe that you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket, sew it to the bottom, and have a longer blanket."