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Data source: Institute of International Finance’s Global Debt Monitor
Graphic source: Visual Capitalist
As of Q4 2025
DST
If you are among those who fervently wish for an end to Daylight Savings Time, this special section of Fact Pack has been lovingly assembled for your edification. (Officially speaking, we are neutral on the issue, in keeping with our policy of providing facts and letting our astute readers debate their value.)
We bring this up because Americans who lost an hour of daylight four months and one week ago (November 1, 2025) must “spring forward” an hour at bedtime this Saturday, March 8, so they can wake up to an accurate clock on Sunday morning.
Facts:
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First proposed in 1895 by George Hudson, an entomologist from New Zealand seeking extra daylight for his studies after work, the idea of DST was slow to catch on both in NZ and globally — until 1907, when Englishman William Willett published The Waste of Daylight, a missive inspired by an early-morning epiphany that “the sun shines upon the land for several hours each day while we are asleep” and yet there “remains only a brief spell of declining daylight in which to spend the short period of leisure at our disposal.”
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Willett lobbied Parliament for legislation until his death in 1915—not living long enough to see the measure passed in England after it became law in Germany. (According to a TIME article, Frankfurt’s daily newspaper Zeitung published this amusing dig: “It is characteristic of England that she could not rouse herself to a decision.”)
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In the U.S., the concept of DST was first introduced during World War I, in 1918, as a measure to conserve fuel needed for war efforts by reducing the amount of energy used for lighting and heating. It was unpopular, and Congress repealed it in 1919.
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Year-round DST was enacted in World War II (1942-1945) for the same purported reason: more coal could be diverted to producing energy for wartime production needs. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce was a major backer for the policy not only in support of war-related manufacturing but also because — as author Michael Downing wrote, Americans getting off work while it was still light out meant they would be more likely, among other things, to:
- go shopping in the evening (benefitting retail stores)
- go to the movies (lining the pockets of movie moguls)
- get on a train (funding the accounts of railroad execs).
- The U.S. government adopted DST again during the 1973 OPEC Oil Embargo. It did not go well. The minuscule amount of energy conserved (roughly 1 percent) did not comfort the millions of parents upset that their children were standing at bus stops at 8 a.m. in pitch blackness, leading to a spike in traffic accidents involving kids.
If you ask to whom DST is most beneficial today, the answer is several rather specific corporate-owned groups, including:
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The Candy Lobby: When DST was adjusted in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 to extend the period by four weeks, it pushed the end date past Halloween. Decades of persistent lobbying to get DST extended past October 31st to create an extra hour of evening daylight on Halloween paid off: Children could and would trick-or-treat later, resulting in millions of dollars in candy sales to meet demand.
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The Golf Lobby: Golf industry data shows that the extra month of evening daylight is worth hundreds of millions of dollars in greens fees and equipment sales.
For most citizens, the utility of DST ended with the invention of efficient LED lightbulbs and more efficient central air conditioning.
Here in Nevada, it is undeniable that messing with time stamps thwarts basic comfort for those who do not like it hot — and costs money. The desert sun leads to increased warmth earlier in the day and sweltering heat for an hour longer all summer, and non-solar households and businesses with one or more a/c units see it reflected in their monthly electric bill.
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