DST spells profits, so reset your clocks, bunky

Daylight Saving Time is a gift from Washington to U.S. business interests.

Washington nannies never tire of fixing non-problems at the expense of citizens. Because of that we recently lost several minutes of our collective life - as happens twice every year - because these meddlers make everybody turn their clocks backward and forward.

And why is this? Follow the money: It's a commercial thing, promoted by chambers of commerce, manufacturers, retailers, restaurants, travel industry, and service providers. But, because none of those money machines wants to take credit, government nannies justify it as an energy-saving device.

Yet there are those who say it doesn't save energy, but costs more when the additional travel costs are figured, and that makes sense to me.

Who wants to take an hour from the morning and add it to the afternoon? Nobody whose job or lifestyle depends on the rising and setting of the sun, but just about everybody who's in business. Not just the golf courses and not just the barbecue suppliers, all enterprises associated with sports, recreation, and travel benefit. That's a big chunk of change, but that's not all.

Since almost nobody goes out for routine shopping after dark if they don't have to - or anything else except night-life socialization and recreation - all retailers profit from more routine shopping because of more evening daylight. There is more of everything happening that costs money during that extra hour in the afternoon.

DST is government's way of making you stay up an hour later so you can spend more money. Slick, huh?

Some references are:

Winners of new daylight savings - Industries cashing in on the change

For a history of the efforts of Robert Garland, president of the Chamber of Commerce of Pittsburgh back in the 1920's, read his report on his efforts and his rationale for "daylight savings." It's called "Ten Years of Daylight Saving from the Pittsburgh Standpoint."It demonstrates how he and his chamber of commerce back then talked about all the supposed advantages except the profit motive.

An extensive report on the history and effects of DST (except that here too the profit motive is pretty much ignored) plus lots of reference material.