A Modest Proposal about DST

Once again, this afternoon I had the strangest feeling, yawning without being tired, hungry at the wrong expected time of day... which reminds me of a proposal I had thought out years ago. To relate...

Daylight Saving Time, the scourge of springtime deadlines.

Daylight Saving Time (DST) is intended to save energy by shifting the labels of the day cycle ("hours") back and forth each spring and fall so that more daylight is available towards the end of the day (when people will tend to be active and use more electricity if the sun is not up). The latest modification of the plan is just minor political tweaking, an enactment of a law because it is so easy to do. But there are unintended consequences of the semiannual (not "biannual": see grammar nazi) shift that are not well-known...

The problem with the current shifting method occurs mainly in the spring when clocks are moved forward ("losing an hour", "spring forward"), moving an hour of sleep filled wasted daylight in the early morning to the evening. However, because of this time change, the -whole world- loses an hour of last-minute time, but also they must rise a full hour ahead of normal, inducing a world wide average jet-lag. Though it is only an hour, the fact that it affects the -whole world- (think of how the badly the Australians feel), makes the statistical affect very significant (studies have shown that it costs tax payers billions of dollars every spring in lost productivity and accidents caused by sleep deprivation, and unmet deadlines due to the necessary last-minute lost hour). Also, more significantly, there have been studies that show that heart attack prevalence increases after the spring time change (due to the average lost hour of sleep over so many people).

In contrast, the fall time shift ("fall backwards") everyone gains an hour; used to catch up on work, sleep, ...just life itself.

There are multiple solutions (destroying civilization and starting from scratch, cutting off peoples thumbs, sundial smashing,  DST all year, ST for half the year/DST the rest (which nothing at all)).

So in the interests of everyone's well-being, and frankly the world economy, I offer the following...

Proposal 1: Let there only be a time change in the fall.

All the benefits of the time change are realized in the fall, and -none- of the problems from the spring change are incurred. If this proposal is successful, as it is very much expected to do so, we suggest the additional...

Proposal 1a: Or move the clock backwards in the spring.

This would double the benefits over the course of the year.
If you consider all the consequences of this new time-shifting protocol, you will realize all the good of the old protocol and none of the bad. In the fall you gain an hour. A sweet bliss, an extra hour to complete that proposal before the deadline. In the spring, what, another hour? Luxury! An extra downy terry cloth bathrobe for that massage! An additional hour of blessed sleep to prepare you for the week ahead.

All of the benfits and none of the drawbacks.