As medical treatment improves more with time, the average lifespan of people is also increasing. This means that the ratio of old people to young people is rising as well (I'm defining someone old if they can no longer contribute to society). Eventually, are we going to reach a point where the percentage of old, unproductive people becomes so high that it causes harm to society? I'm not talking about now or even in the near future. I'm talking about hundreds or maybe even thousands of years from now when the average lifespan stretches out well beyond what we've observed so far. Will we be forced to stop providing these people with medical treatment for the betterment of society as a whole?
In an ideal world, maybe as medical treatment improves, it also improves people's ability to contribute to society even when they're "old". I'm not too educated on this subject, so I don't know the plausibility of this happening, but it would be nice. Or perhaps the world will get fatter, lazier and generally more unhealthy which offsets any major advances in medical treatment. Or what if scientist have found ways to prolong the average lifespan well into the hundreds, but have refused to tell the general public to prevent society collapse due to too many old people. Maybe someone more educated on the topic can tell what's likely to happen in the far future, or maybe even near future.
