· Americans spend, conservatively, about $1.7 billion in time wasted changing their clocks and watches to reflect the springing forward and falling back each year;

· DST causes deaths, as more pedestrians are hit in the fall after the return to standard time, and more car accidents happen due to tired drivers in the spring.

The point is not that we should abandon DST because it is bad policy (we should and it is), but that we should abandon the notion that bureaucrats and politicians can tweak policies to make a better world.

The law of unintended consequences makes it unlikely that the good anticipated will come about, and ensure that all sorts of bad things not anticipated will come to pass.

The world is imperfect, as are we. But with few exceptions it is better to let people muddle about in relative freedom than to try to socially engineer them into some preconceived and probably impossible better world.

Ironically enough, that was the point of the Benjamin Franklin’s satirical essay that has led many to believe that he, not William Willet was the inventor of DST. What Franklin thought absurd and amusing, forcing Parisians through government fiat to abandon their love of nighttime activities, has now become the official public policy of much of the world.

Ah, progress!