TIME IS ON OUR SIDE. John J. Miller observes that "The person who invented the abomination that is Daylight Saving Time obviously was not responsible for getting children out of bed and off to school." Indeed, DST is a huge pain in the ass for everyone. So who's to blame? As is often the case with bad ideas (segregation of the US Postal Service, Yugoslavia, mass arrests of union leaders, censorship of newspaper flu coverage) the culprit is the wartime policies of Woodrow Wilson who introduced DST as an energy conservation measure in 1918. After the war, DST blessedly went away in most jurisdictions, only to return during World War II, be formalized by the federal government during the late 1970s energy crisis, and expanded in duration in last year's energy bill.
For one thing, as far as energy conservation measures go, altering the structure of time is a little extreme. More to the point, there's no evidence that this actually works. Even if it did work, the amount of possible savings is minimal since all it targets is electric lights which are a very minor component of overall energy usage.
--Matthew Yglesias
