By Dr. Thomas Patterson |

Americans are getting fed up with their government. Why not remove some useless government-provided “stuff” from our lives? It would be cheap and easy.

For example, Daylight Savings Time (DST) can’t compete for attention with issues like inflation, immigration, and geopolitical threats, so it just hangs around. We would be better off without it.

DST was implemented during World War I to help conserve fuel and extend the working hours for which there was sunlight. Some of the early objections to DST were that it was a bad idea to tinker with God’s time and that it upset cows’ digestion to be fed earlier in the day. We blew past these, but no compelling replacement rationale for DST has ever developed.

Although it has been marketed as a fuel saving strategy, an Energy Department study in 2008 showed no effect on overall vehicle gas consumption attributable to DST. Other academic studies also found no benefit in crime statistics, travel times, or trade due to DST, while school and work attendance suffer slightly during the shifts.

Two states, Hawaii and most of Arizona, don’t observe DST anyway, so we have only to endure badly timed phone calls from the East Coast and remembering to adjust the times of televised sports broadcasts. Twenty states have petitioned to go on DST permanently but lack the required federal permission to do so. So, the semi-annual shifts persist as an unattractive irritant with little constituency, which exist mainly because of political inertia.

Then there’s our old friend, the humble penny. Americans have considerable nostalgia for the little guy: a penny saved is a penny earned and all that. Plus it has a picture of Lincoln on it. But cumulative inflation over the years has left the penny less than valueless. In 2024, it cost the U.S. 3.7 cents to produce and distribute a penny, something so colossally stupid only government could even contemplate it.

Moreover, pennies make cash transactions more cumbersome and thus more time-consuming. The average American makes about one cent every two seconds, so if it takes her more than two seconds to fish out and spend a penny, you’re losing money there too.

All these small injuries add up more than you might think. Last year, the U.S. minted 3.2 billion pennies, mostly because they are so worthless that they’re often not returned to circulation, ending up “under the couch cushions.” Do the math.

This is a true no-brainer. There isn’t a significant pro-penny political constituency, and it is logistically simple for Congress to simply order the U.S. Mint to stop making pennies. We eliminated the half-penny in 1857, and life went on. The retail economy is going over to credit cards anyway, so the nickel should also be slated for elimination before long.

HOV lanes were created in the 1970s and 80s in an effort to reduce the total number of cars on the road and (again) reduce fuel consumption. Their creation was part of the great surge of interest in reducing hydrocarbon emissions in the belief that eliminating greenhouse gases would be a feasible way to save the planet.

HOV lanes have never come close to achieving the anticipated result. According to the Reason Foundation, HOV lane miles have gone from 1,500 in 1985 to over 4,000 today. Yet carpooling among commuters dropped from 19.7% in 1980 to under 9% by 2019. The number of people who commute solo has actually risen from 64% to 80% in spite of all the inducements.

The massive investments in transit by our centralized transportation planners have also been fruitless, actually reducing the number of commuters using transit from 6.4% in 1980 to 5.0% in 2019.

Why have HOV lanes failed? Mostly because drivers just aren’t that interested. But enforcement is costly and ineffective. Studies have found that up to 84% of vehicles in HOV lanes are there illegally.

Moreover, during peak periods when freeways are slowed by overutilization, HOV lanes can contribute to the problem by taking a much needed but underutilized lane out of commission. The added freeway congestion meanwhile contributes to the emissions problem HOV lanes are supposed to ameliorate.

It’s time. Just do it.

Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.