LOGAN – A recent USA Today story quotes a Utah State University professor regarding the twice-a-year ritual of most Americans adjusting their clocks.
Dr. William Shughart, a professor in USU’s Jon M. Huntsman School of Business, supports following standard time all year long, just like Arizona, Hawaii, and the U.S. territories.
He said he came to that decision from his background as an economist.
“Back in those days everybody in the United States wasted 10 minutes a day, twice a year, changing their clocks,” Shughart said, “which amounted to economic costs of nearly $2 billion a year.”
He said that left him indifferent between standard time and daylight saving time; he just wanted to stop the wasteful practice of changing clocks twice a year.
He learned later of the science that human beings do best when sunlight is in the morning rather than at the end of the day.
“I switched my position in favor of standard time,” he explained, “which does in fact make it better early in the morning and darker at the end of the day, as opposed to daylight saving time which does the opposite.”
Dr. Shughart, who is the J. Fish Smith Professor in Public Choice at the Huntsman College, said in ensuing years of research he has found no credible study to change his position.
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