The other day Susan and I were driving somewhere, and we began to speculate on why we put up with daylight saving, a nonsensical, irritating law that does no good whatsoever. It does not get us an extra hour of sunlight. That would violate the laws of physics. Despite no expertise in economics, Susan and I got as far as the realization that somebody in the 1% was making big money from daylight saving, but we had no idea who.
It turns out, according to Book TV, that daylight saving in this country was first backed by major department store chains to increase afternoon shopping hours for people with jobs. Later on, daylight saving improved life for morning stock traders who wanted to buy and sell in Europe. (Daylight saving has had nothing to do with farmers, by the way. They’ve always hated it. I think they already knew when the Sun came up.)
The President who tried hardest to get rid of daylight saving was Richard Nixon, I am revising my view of him upward a tick.
The expert on all this is Michael Downing, who pointed out that American time zones are reset up to strengthen various commercial enterprises, which is why they keep changing. It could be worse. He noted that China has one time zone, so in China some cities see the sunrise at one in the afternoon.
No comments:
Post a Comment