Time is money, now a misguided notion

In 1784, Benjamin Franklin composed a satire, "Essay on Daylight Saving", proposing a law that would oblige Parisians to get up an hour earlier in summer. By putting the daylight to better use, he reasoned, they would save a good deal of money - 96 million livres tournois - that might otherwise go to buying candles.

Now this switch to daylight saving time (which occurs on Sunday in the United States) is an annual ritual in Western countries.

Even more influential has been something else Franklin said about time in the same year: Time is money. He meant this only as a gentle reminder not to "sit idle" for half the day. He might be dismayed if he could see how literally, and self-destructively, we take his metaphor today.