More people are awake at 5pm than at 7am though. Lots of people won't benefit from more sunlight that early in the morning, but almost everyone benefits from more sunlight in late afternoon / early evening.

> More people are awake at 5pm than at 7am though.

"More" perhaps, but probably not by that much? Schools start around 8, most people need to be in the office before 9, and so on. I don't know many people who are able to get up later than 7:30 or so, unless they work from home. And with permanent DST, the sun won't finish rising until after 8 am.

> the sun won't finish rising until after 8 am

This is only true for the northernmost reaches of the US on the darkest days of the year. Portland Maine will see sunrise at around 8:15 on the darkest day, Seattle will have it around 8:30. 99% of Americans will still wake up to sunrise year-round

I live in NYC, which is not that far north, and in the week before DST ends it's still quite dark as late as 7:40.

> I don't know many people who are able to get up later than 7:30 or so

I hardly know anyone who gets up regularly before 8am.

Yeah, but in winter I get up when it's dark and it's dark again by the time I leave work. It's extremely depressing. At least with perma-DST (or BST as it would be here) I'd have some chance of a bit of daylight at the end of the day.

I have black-out curtains, so it looks like the middle of the night at high noon in my bedroom. A sun filled room while I'm trying to sleep would be my version of hell.

Where do you live that DST would make you wake up in the middle of the night? Even in Seattle twilight officially starts around 6:30am at the latest.

It feels like it when it's still dark.