Trump wants to end Daylight Savings Time

[angus]

Here is an easy chart with sunrise and sunset times for various locations.  Select the state in which you live, then the city.  (Note that there aren't many cities.  I had to pick one about 20 miles west of where I live, but you can get approximate times.)

https://savestandardtime.com/chart/?city=5197079

It's useful because most people who support changing the clock twice per year do so because they object to early sunrises or late sunsets.  To be sure, if we do not change our clocks then we will have to accept the great swings of daylight hours in our orbit about the sun.  To me, that is preferable to the semiannual stress of time changes, and our evolution has probably prepared us more for those natural changes than for the abrupt semiannual stresses when we are slaves to the clock.

Among that 70% percent who want to do away with the time change, there is a sub-debate.  Do we keep DST or Standard Time?  I favor the standard time, although it seems that I am in a minority.  I do not like to see the children waiting for the bus in the dark.  I also don't care for driving in the dark in the morning.  I think the advantages outweigh the inconveniences if we completely eliminate DST.  This is the first time I can remember having been in agreement with Donald Trump.  Make America great again!

[100% pro-life no matter what]

Here is an easy chart with sunrise and sunset times for various locations.  Select the state in which you live, then the city.  (Note that there aren't many cities.  I had to pick one about 20 miles west of where I live, but you can get approximate times.)

https://savestandardtime.com/chart/?city=5197079

It's useful because most people who support changing the clock twice per year do so because they object to early sunrises or late sunsets.  To be sure, if we do not change our clocks then we will have to accept the great swings of daylight hours in our orbit about the sun.  To me, that is preferable to the semiannual stress of time changes, and our evolution has probably prepared us more for those natural changes than for the abrupt semiannual stresses when we are slaves to the clock.

Among that 70% percent who want to do away with the time change, there is a sub-debate.  Do we keep DST or Standard Time?  I favor the standard time, although it seems that I am in a minority.  I do not like to see the children waiting for the bus in the dark.  I also don't care for driving in the dark in the morning.  I think the advantages outweigh the inconveniences if we completely eliminate DST.  This is the first time I can remember having been in agreement with Donald Trump.  Make America great again!

A lot of the debate seems to be that people on the western side of their timezones want the clocks back, while those on the eastern side of their timezones want them forward.  Maybe we could adjust the boundaries of the time zones to try to make as many people happy as possible (or, less ideally, split the difference by offsetting time by a half hour)?

[Jumped off the American Sinking Ship]

rare trump w, switching clocks only questionably made sense decades ago.

[Mr. Smith]

Gross. End standard time instead. I hate leaving work in the dark.

I like waking up in the light.

[Beet]

I certainly hope he means he intends to move to permanent DST, but I do generally trust Donald Trump to make the absolute worst decision on everything.

Seems like we're in the minority sadly. This means it'll get dark earlier.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Here is an easy chart with sunrise and sunset times for various locations.  Select the state in which you live, then the city.  (Note that there aren't many cities.  I had to pick one about 20 miles west of where I live, but you can get approximate times.)

https://savestandardtime.com/chart/?city=5197079

It's useful because most people who support changing the clock twice per year do so because they object to early sunrises or late sunsets.  To be sure, if we do not change our clocks then we will have to accept the great swings of daylight hours in our orbit about the sun.  To me, that is preferable to the semiannual stress of time changes, and our evolution has probably prepared us more for those natural changes than for the abrupt semiannual stresses when we are slaves to the clock.

Among that 70% percent who want to do away with the time change, there is a sub-debate.  Do we keep DST or Standard Time?  I favor the standard time, although it seems that I am in a minority.  I do not like to see the children waiting for the bus in the dark.  I also don't care for driving in the dark in the morning.  I think the advantages outweigh the inconveniences if we completely eliminate DST.  This is the first time I can remember having been in agreement with Donald Trump.  Make America great again!

Children should not be getting on the bus in the dark, but this is mostly because children shouldn’t be going to school this early in the first place. Moving the start of the school day one hour later would be a much more beneficial change to society than anything related to DST, but perhaps moving to permanent DST would help spur this along.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Personally I hate the transitions, especially the Spring one, and would like to stay on a consistent time all year -- preferably by banning DST.  If it must be made permanent, states should have the option to switch time zones.  For states like Georgia that are on the western edge of their time zones, moving to permanent DST would create very late sunrises in the winter; in Atlanta, the sun wouldn't rise until around 8:45 a.m. in the days around the solstice.  But I can see that people who live in states on the eastern side of their time zone would like to make DST permanent because it would keep it from getting dark so early in the winter.  There's no way to please everyone here.  

Part of the problem is that U.S. time zone definitions are not particularly logical.  Ideally, each should cover 15 degrees of longitude, centered on meridians that are multiples of 15 degrees.  Here's a proposal I came up with a few years ago for reorganizing the time zones of the lower 48 states.  The goals were:

- Make the zones as geographically logical as possible.
- Don't divide states (exceptions may be considered for special cases).
- There is no more DST - the clocks never change.
- But since more people do like extra daylight in the evenings in summer, we'll advance the clocks an hour ahead of what they should be based on their geographical location.

This gives us:




Eastern Time (red) - states with most of their territory in 67.5W-82.5W, time UTC-4 (equal to current Eastern Daylight Time or Atlantic Standard Time)

Central Time (blue) - 82.5W-97.5W, time UTC-5 (current CDT/EST)

Mountain Time (yellow) - 97.5W-112.5W, time UTC-6 (MDT/CST)

Pacific Time (green) - 112.5W-127.5W, time UTC-7 (PDT/MST)

A few states (Utah, Arizona, Oklahoma, Ohio, and Florida) are split nearly evenly by the longitude boundaries and could reasonably go with either side.  I wouldn't quibble about any such moves.  The Kansas City and Omaha metros also get split by this, so there could be local adjustments there.  It also wouldn't be unreasonable to move the whole Texas-North Dakota tier into Central in this plan.

This is a very good proposal, though I imagine Florida would want to stick with the eastern time zone since they are far enough South that they are less sensitive to seasonal time changes.

[Trump v. Wong Kim Ark]

I’m in favor of permanent DST. It’s not like I want to get up in the morning regardless of whether there’s light or not; I’d rather have more light in the evening to enjoy.

[Senator Sirius]

I’m in favor of permanent DST. It’s not like I want to get up in the morning regardless of whether there’s light or not; I’d rather have more light in the evening to enjoy.

Winter is so dark that most people still aren't really going to enjoy that extra light in the evening though.

[Doomer]

End the one that gets dark at like 5:30pm.

I’d be all for that.

[Meclazine for Israel]

It fades the curtains with more afternoon sun.

It also makes cows not milk properly because they get up later.

Trump is right.

https://www.agforceqld.org.au/knowledgebase/article/AGF-01640/

[MasterJedi]

Trump says a lot, we’ll see what happens.

[MarkD]

I don't like to admit being confused/ignorant about this topic, but I am. Confused and/or ignorant, that is. I thought Congress already had passed a law doing away with either Standard Time or DST. I thought it was already fait accompli, and that this last switch to Standard Time was going to be the last time the switch happened. Or that next spring was going to be the last time it switched back and we will then be going to DST permanently. One way or the other, I thought Congress had already passed a bill and Biden had signed it. Did I miss some news about it? Was it merely proposed, and it failed to pass?

[SWE]

I don't like to admit being confused/ignorant about this topic, but I am. Confused and/or ignorant, that is. I thought Congress already had passed a law doing away with either Standard Time or DST. I thought it was already fait accompli, and that this last switch to Standard Time was going to be the last time the switch happened. Or that next spring was going to be the last time it switched back and we will then be going to DST permanently. One way or the other, I thought Congress had already passed a bill and Biden had signed it. Did I miss some news about it? Was it merely proposed, and it failed to pass?

It passed the Senate but never the House

[VBM]

Do ppl really hold such strong feelings on this issue?

Like personally, I could care less.

So you do have strong feelings on the issue.

[Arizona Iced Tea]

Standard time is much better for our natural rythm than DST. I don't think post 8am sunrises are going to be healthy because our bodies were designed to keep pace with the sun.

[emailking]

Trump says a lot, we’ll see what happens.

Yeah as I said earlier in the thread, he talked about this, about as a briefly, in his first term too.

[emailking]

I don't like to admit being confused/ignorant about this topic, but I am. Confused and/or ignorant, that is. I thought Congress already had passed a law doing away with either Standard Time or DST. I thought it was already fait accompli, and that this last switch to Standard Time was going to be the last time the switch happened. Or that next spring was going to be the last time it switched back and we will then be going to DST permanently. One way or the other, I thought Congress had already passed a bill and Biden had signed it. Did I miss some news about it? Was it merely proposed, and it failed to pass?

It passed the Senate but never the House

Yes it passed the Senate by accident and the House took it up but the constituency feedback was so mixed on what to do that it never did anything with it.

[E-Dawg]

Permanent standard time is the way to go. Making sunrise in winter later than 8AM in many places is an awful idea that people will likely hate. It is important that it's light outside when most of society goes out for school or work, that's time should be built around (which is why it's called Standard Time). It should not be built around people getting leisure in the evenings. I'm curious if there's public polling on this issue? I'm not sure why this is a federal thing, shouldn't states decide their time zones?

[President Johnson]

Broken clock moment.

However, I wish we would make Daylight Savings Time permanent instead of regular time. The fact that it's pretty much dark outside at 5 pm is absolutely annoying. Meanwhile, I don't care if the sun doesn't rise before 9 am.

The EU had some online poll a few years ago, in which a large majority of European citizens voted to end turning the clock back and forth. This was never implemented so far, because national governments can't agree on regular or daylight savings time.

[oldtimer]

Permanent standard time is the way to go. Making sunrise in winter later than 8AM in many places is an awful idea that people will likely hate. It is important that it's light outside when most of society goes out for school or work, that's time should be built around (which is why it's called Standard Time). It should not be built around people getting leisure in the evenings. I'm curious if there's public polling on this issue? I'm not sure why this is a federal thing, shouldn't states decide their time zones?

In some cases you are too far away from the equator to escape winter darkness with or without DST.

[MasterofPuppets]

Trump hates daylight!

It's nighttime in America according to liberals.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

Broken clock moment.

However, I wish we would make Daylight Savings Time permanent instead of regular time. The fact that it's pretty much dark outside at 5 pm is absolutely annoying. Meanwhile, I don't care if the sun doesn't rise before 9 am.

The EU had some online poll a few years ago, in which a large majority of European citizens voted to end turning the clock back and forth. This was never implemented so far, because national governments can't agree on regular or daylight savings time.

I'm getting the sense that it will go like that here too.  Congress won't be able to agree on which time to permanently switch to, so we'll keep doing the compromise that no one likes.

[CheapDollarEra?]

Rare Based Trump moment

[angus]

Here are some interesting maps from a study by cartographer Andy Woodruff.  You can see how many days per year would have normal sunrises and sunsets depending upon whether DST is used.  They do depend upon keeping the current time zone boundaries.  We could consider changing those as well.