This year, Americans on Eastern Standard Time should set their clocks back one hour (like normal), Americans on Central and Rocky Mountain time do nothing, and Americans on Pacific time should set their clocks forward one hour. After that we won’t change our clocks again – no more daylight saving. This will result in just two time zones for the continental United States. The east and west coasts will only be one hour apart. Anyone who lives on one coast and does business with the other can imagine the uncountable benefits of living in a two-time-zone nation (excluding Alaska and Hawaii).
Brilliant, although I’d separate Western and Eastern time by two hours.1 Central is already living on Eastern time anyway2, so Central should join Eastern. I’m in Seattle and prefer sprung forward’s evening sun, so I advocate for Pacific joining Mountain as Allison suggests.
Fun fact: states decide if they participate in DST, so Washington, Oregon, and California can trilaterally abolish Pacific Time, assuming Nevada and Northern Idaho just follow the crowd at chow time.3
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I understand it would be awkward to skip two hours between the new Western and Eastern time zones, but I’m staring at a map, and that boundary is very sparsely populated. Most people live in coastal states, and one hour just doesn’t reflect the longitudinal span of the United States. ↩
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Tonight on 60-Minutes, at 7/6c. ↩
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Go Federalism! ↩