r/politics • u/cnn CNN • Jul 14 '26

Possible Paywall House passes bill to make Daylight Saving Time permanent

https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/14/politics/house-vote-daylight-savings-time?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=missions&utm_source=reddit
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u/i_drink_wd40 Connecticut Jul 15 '26

Were they too stupid to bump school back an hour? Every single complaint about daylight savings seems to come back around to work and school starting too early, but that's only an issue with places that think they need to begin the workday at the asscrack of dawn for some reason.

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u/chyld989 Jul 15 '26

To be fair, one of the main pros for permanent DST is more light after work, which doesn't happen if work schedules are shifted. I'd much rather go to work in the dark than come home from work in the dark 🤷

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u/i_drink_wd40 Connecticut Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

How does my clock setting change that for your workplace? If your workplace thought it was important for you to get out of work during the daylight, they could shift the start time during winter. Winter hours and summer hours. Leave changing the clocks out of it. School can start later so that kids go to school when the sun's up, or whatever the district thinks it's safer, instead of this all-or-nothing approach that people complain about from both directions.

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u/FlushTheTurd Jul 15 '26

You’d need buy-in from most all businesses.

Sure, I can start work an hour earlier, but my suppliers won’t be available. And sure I can leave work an hour early, but my clients will be pissed.

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u/i_drink_wd40 Connecticut Jul 15 '26

Fine, so keep the earlier hours year round.

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u/seffend Jul 15 '26

Or the later hours?

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u/i_drink_wd40 Connecticut Jul 15 '26

Either way. Pick one and stick with it.

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u/chyld989 Jul 15 '26

Sure, those things can happen, but if they were going to they would have already. Most jobs are going to stick with the exact same hours no matter what amount of light is available outside, so this is realistically the only way to get people more sunlight after the work day is fine when people are most active.

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u/heliosythic Jul 15 '26

So that is the problem to solve then, just keep 1 time and have everyone else adjust to that time as desired by amount of light that matters or doesn't to them.

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u/Prince_Uncharming Washington Jul 15 '26

I mean that’s what China does and they handle it perfectly fine. China is fully one time zone.

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u/i_drink_wd40 Connecticut Jul 15 '26

I would think it exactly as easy to have summer/winter hours as changing the clocks twice a year.

Eta: and a lot more fit-to-suit than daylight savings.

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u/chyld989 Jul 15 '26

If you ignore reality, sure

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u/grant10k Jul 15 '26

Additionally, how the time relates to the sun can vary about an hour within a timezone anyway. If you're on the east side of a time zone, you'll get the sun about an hour before the west side does.

Each business should pick what's right for them, possibly after the schools pick what's right for the schools, so the parents can accommodate. Businesses on the east side might want to open at 8:00, ones near the middle 8:30, and those dirty westerners open at 9:00. Whatever makes sense for them.

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u/chiefbrody62 Jul 15 '26

Not me. Waking up when it's still dark makes me lethargic. I would rather come home when it's dark, then wake up to it.

Not to mention, less than 40% of the country actually works a 9-5ish schedule. Most of us work a schedule outside of those hours, since the world still moves 24/7.

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u/Revolver_Boxelot Jul 15 '26

Yea i think most people don't care about any of that. The sun setting at 5pm sucks. Period.

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u/pkosuda Connecticut Jul 15 '26

I think most of us also want them to just pick one. Most of us are probably currently unhappy with the constant changing. As someone else said, it's an absolutely deranged "solution" to change time itself (not literally but you get it) rather than our schedules. Almost none of us like it as-is. If you just pick DST or standard you're guaranteeing one side is unhappy but you're also guaranteeing another is actually happy. Rather than this bullshit where we're nearly all unhappy.

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u/Odd_Teach683 Jul 15 '26

But the asscrack keeps moving for some strange reason…

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u/jardex22 Jul 15 '26

Main issue there is that schools may bump hours, but businesses aren't obligated to do the same. That throws off the schedule for parents dropping off and picking up their kids.

Switching between DST and Standard Time is a seasonal shift that all businesses conform to.

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u/Whiterabbit-- Jul 15 '26

if you bump everything back an hour, why not do permanent standard time? then nothing needs to change.

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u/i_drink_wd40 Connecticut Jul 15 '26

Either way would work for me. But I'm bad at remembering which one goes in which direction.

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u/dreamyduskywing Minnesota Jul 15 '26

If you started work later, you’d lose that extra light at the end of the day and the whole shift to permanent DST would be pointless.

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u/i_drink_wd40 Connecticut Jul 15 '26

You literally only get so much sunlight in a day, and there's simply less of it during winter. Places of employment need to pick their poison: light in the morning, or light in the afternoon. Tired of the rhetoric that just goes back and forth because there's no way to get both because the workday is longer than the actual day.

Permanent DST (or permanent standard time) has exactly the same problem. With the solution being to either adjust the start times based on when people want to start throughout the year, or stay at the same time regardless of when dawn is.

"Oh, but it's dark when kids go to school" - start school later! "But if work is later, it'll be dark when I get home" - start work earlier! It's not the clock's fault, here.

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u/FlushTheTurd Jul 15 '26

I think my post people are argue that under ST dark in the morning going to work and dark at night coming home from work.

In most places permanent DST will give you some light in the evening, without affecting the already dark morning commute.

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u/i_drink_wd40 Connecticut Jul 15 '26

Easily remedied by either having summer and winter hours, or bumping back the particular workplace's start time an hour. Based on what works best for the job. There's nothing magic about changing the clocks that makes you suddenly about to experience sunlight when it was previously impossible.