LeBron James Exposes The Flaw In The 'Retirement Crisis' Narrative

Forbes

08-07-2025

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - OCTOBER 22: LeBron James #23 and Bronny James #9 of the Los Angeles Lakers ... More on defense during the second quarter against the Minnesota Timberwolves at Crypto.com Arena on October 22, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by)
There's no retirement crisis. Those promoting the notion that Americans don't have enough money to retire will eventually regret their expressed pessimism.
Contemplate the happy fact that LeBron James recently announced a plan to return for his 23rd NBA season. James's decision helps expose the flaw in a 'retirement crisis' narrative that just won't die.
James plainly doesn't need to work, which is the point. That he's still playing has to do with the happy fact that he's by all accounts the most intelligent basketball player alive.
James can't not play. Which is just a comment that for James to retire would be for the world's most intelligent basketball player to stop doing what reinforces his genius more than any other activity.
What's important is that there are more and more LeBron James-type people all around us. Evidence supporting this claim can be found in the estimates from retirement experts that Americans don't have enough money to retire. The experts are incorrect.
Worse, at least for the experts, is that in promoting the fiction that future American retirees face substantial challenges in retirement owing to insufficient funds, they're intimating that markets aren't just stupid, but ferociously so. They're implying that most future retirees are whistling past a future inevitability that apparently includes not working, and they're whistling while not saving.
More realistically, a growing number of future retirees view their work in the way that James views his. Exactly because it showcases their own unique genius, they have no intention of quitting work anytime soon in much the same way that James continues to push not working into the future.
Which means the 'retirement crisis' promoted by retirement experts promises to continue to grow. It's a bullish signal.
It's a sign that artificial intelligence, robots and other job destroyers will more than live up to their much-hyped potential. Assuming the proliferation of robots and machines that can think for us in addition to doing for us, the number of people staving off retirement a la James will multiply at a much greater rate.
That which erases the work of the past and present doesn't put us out of work as much as it elevates our work. Figure that automation is just a sign of how much human potential was wasted in the past. To grasp this, contemplate how many 19th century Americans worked six days per week, from dawn to dusk, on farms.
Talk about the suffocation of potential. What was true about farms is true about the factories and mills that Americans romanticize to this day. What a waste!
Bringing it back to LeBron James and the growing number of Americans fighting off retirement, that's why they don't have as much saved as the experts think they should. Notable here is that even the retirement experts are approaching work in the way that James does, along with the Americans who supposedly don't have enough money for when they're not working. See Alicia Munnell, and her decision to helm Boston College's Center for Retirement Research right into her 80s. She loved the work, so why retire?
Munnell, like James, is evidence of a trend that can only grow if AI achieves even a fraction of its potential. If so, Americans will save even less for a time when they're not working precisely because their goal will be to work until they die.
Why not, if work is life? People who live to work don't need as much for when they're not working, which may be never.