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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Barro is very fond of pointing out that we tried this once in the 1970s and almost immediately rolled it back. Permanent DST means that it's dark between 8-9AM in large swathes of the US. Among other problems, having kids go to school in the dark or twilight hours is unsafe, so schools responded by adjusting their schedules, which is an even bigger problem than DST, because the rest of the economy has a de facto requirement to coordinate with school schedules.

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That makes this the perfect time to do this.

There's tons of research out there that early school start times have a negative impact on students' learning, alertness, and well-being. We should be pushing schools back to a 8:30-9:00 AM start time. My high school started at 8:30, which was much better than my sister's 7:00 AM start time, and this was explicitly called out as a plus when my high school was accredited.

The reason we don't do this is exactly the reason you mention: for the convenience of adults and the rest of the economy. Children don't get a voice, but corporations do. And that's also what makes this the perfect time to do it, when the future of work is in total disarray, nobody knows how they're going to be handling RTO, and large swaths of America is quitting for remote jobs (or just quitting) anyway.

There is a huge difference between the 1970's and now. Light, lot's of it. We have so much more light today then in the 70's, our headlights are brighter, we have more street lamps, and so much more.

We'll also see more northern states adopt permanent DST while southern states adopt permanent ST. Kids already go to school in the dark in the northern states, but they also come home in it too. This change will give them some daylight in the afternoon to go out and socialize.

For some definition of "we". I wasn't alive in the 1970s; half of people living today weren't.

That doesn't pass the smell test. In my areas different schools start at different times and always have.

Right, but they don't start at different times during the school year.

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