Why don't all states use daylight savings time?

Perhaps a better question is why not abandon it all together?

And replace it with what? I'd support one worldwide timezone, but not total caos.

While a uniform time would eliminate one problem, it would create another. If it were midnight at the same time worldwide, for some it would mean breakfast time while for others it would mean sleeping time. Our whole concept of time of day would be completely out of whack with respect to others.

The states are not required to use Daylight Savings Time, but there is a
federal law requiring that, if they do, they must use the same starting and
end dates.

In the US, Arizona and Hawaii (and the territories of Puerto Rico, Virgin
Islands and American Samoa) don't use DST. Indiana is a whole 'nother
story. It goes county by county. Most counties are in the Eastern Time
Zone and do not use DST (except for two counties near Cincinnati, OH,
and Louisville, KY). In the northwest near Chicago and the southwest
near Evansville they are in the Central Time Zone and they do use DST.

I believe Indiana's opposition to DST is farm-based. Farmers' days are
more closely tied to actual sunrise and sunset. As for Hawaii, it probably
has to do with being close to the equator and thus having pretty uniform
hours of day and night yearlong. Arizona? I don't know, maybe they figure
they have quite enough sun as it is.

In Canada, only Saskatewan remains on standard time all year.

I might add that there is a universal time (Greenwich Mean Time) which is the time on the zero meridian. This time is used in military (and often civilian) planning so that everyone is "on the same page". It must be used in conjunction with local times however or one would not know if he was dealing with daytime or nighttime operations.

Why do Some States not use Daylight Saving Time?
The question I have always had, is why do ANY states use daylight saving time? To me it seems unnecessarily confusing and even silly.

Hang on kids, I don't think we should abolish time zones - where do you get that idea from. I think daylight savings should go bubye.

I personally don't like it.

And good question!

I remember being in Nebraska and wondering how they handled the difference in time zones within the state? Personally, that would drive me crazy.

To think of living in one town, and working in another just ten miles apart and being on different time zones would be enough to drive you nutts!

Just think: Before the advent of inter-city trains in this country, there was no standardized time system in the U.S. at all. In one town it could be 8:00, and in the next, 8:04.

How times have changed...

easyasabc...The Day-Light-Saving-Time issue goes back to World War 2 but later got reinforcing support from the suburbanization of America.
Let's start with this scenario:
In the wintertime the sun would rise at 7 am and would set at 7 pm
In the summertime the sun would rise at 6 am and set at 8 pm. (I am simplifying this, of course, for illustrative purposes).
Anyway, most urban folks were still asleep at 6 am and perhaps didn't begin their commute to work until 7 am. So the hour of daylight between 6 and 7 am was wasted. DST came into play in WW2 as a way to reduce the energy expense of factories and offices by using "natural" light'
WW2 ended but the notion of DST was set and will probably never go away. You could work at your job and then come home and have a couple of hours of daylight left to push around your Sears lawnmower or get into a softball game without the need for lights.
Rural people had and have no need for DST. Cows don't wear wristwatches. DST works to their (the farmers, not the cows) disadvantage.
I hope that this helps. -rjb-

Wait, would we loose an hour at night during the summer or gain an hour in the winter if we dumped the DLS thing?

If we dumped DST, then we would "lose" an hour of daylight in the
evening during the summer. Winter would remain the same because it is
standard time.

So with DST if the sunset is at 8:30 some day in July, then without DST
the time of sunset would be 7:30.

Until all of a sudden people notice "Hey, I need to wake up at 12:00 (07:00 + 05:00) to be at work at 13:00 (08:00 +05:00), and I get off work at 21:00 (16:00 +05:00).

It's not rocket science. If your Boss tells you that you have to be present at a certain hour, then you figure out what your sleep pattern is, and you figure out how to be there on time. Like I said, not rocket science.

With Indiana's recent decision to move to daylight savings time, I'm considering moving to Arizona or Hawaii (the two last states with any sense)

[edit] I use +5 because Indiana used to be just plain -5, and because it makes rather simple math.

We here in Blighty sit on the good old Greenwich Meridian, but we still insist on using British Summer Time (GMT+1) from March to October. As for why, it always seems a bit of a dubious reason, especially in this day and age.

I believe that GMT was introduced to allow for the smooth runnning of our railways. The "true" time difference between Britain's eastern-most and western-most points is something like 35 minutes. In a country of Britain's geographical size, it would be crazy to have multiple time zones. It makes much more sense in countries the size of the US, Canada, Australia etc.

Wasn't it announced that the U.S. plans to extend DST by 2 months? It is currently from April to October. They plan to change it to March to November. Really gonna cause some problems if Canada does not change too. We have enough problems remembering that Saskatchewan does not go onto DST.