Yeah, as someone who lives in Vermont, you could talk me into permanent DST. That would move the winter sunset from, say, 4:21pm to 5:21pm, which would mean I'd get enough twilight for a short walk after work. And Maine is even further east and north in the same time zone, so they have an even earlier sunset. On the other hand, Vermont's standard time sunrise around 7:20 is reasonable enough.

Parts of Vermont have traditionally coped with this by having an 8-4 workday instead of 9-5.

But the reality is that Vermont gets only about an hour of daylight outside working hours, depending on local customs. People have extremely strong preferences about how that hour gets split up.

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jsdalton a day ago | parent [-]

Permanent DST is just a synonym for "let's all agree to wake up an hour earlier." The same change could be affected by e.g. schools and businesses agreeing to open at 8am instead of 9am. (Of course that would be wildly unpopular so permanent DST is just way to trick people into swallowing the pill.)

But would behavior change in the long run? Countries like Spain where solar noon differs wildly from clock noon just end up aligning their rituals accordingly (e.g. eating dinner at 9pm).

	▲	ekidd a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> The same change could be affected by e.g. schools and businesses agreeing to open at 8am instead of 9am. School starts at 8am everywhere that I know of in northern New England and always has? Does school start at 9am where you live? And as noted, an 8am start to the working day is long established in certain parts of Vermont and New Hampshire. It has not been "widely unpopular." It's nice to get a few minutes of sunlight and twilight after work in winter.
	▲	gonzalohm 20 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		People may adjust their eating times or leisure activities, but work is 9 to 5. It's amazing to have almost 5 hours of sunlight after work