Editor;

(Re: Fletcher: Urban society slides into helplessness; The Merritt Herald, September 4, 2015.)

Tom Fletcher’s latest confusing rant challenges your readers to be “competent” enough to plan for retirement using RRSP savings accounts without government assistance, tenuously suggests nationally subsidized child care is a form of incompetency and then rather ominously asks us if we are “ready for the day when the machine stops.”

One can only assume Mr. Fletcher somehow intends “the machine” metaphor to be a thinly-veiled reference to the federal government collapsing.

If so, I urge caution: RRSP savings accounts are registered with the federal government. Should that particular “machine” fail, your registered retirement savings plan would be rendered worthless, as it would be “registered” with no one in particular.

That spot under the mattress is beginning to look even more attractive as a place to plan for our retirements. Thanks for the advice, Mr. Fletcher.

Max Rundle Wilkie

Kelowna, BC