I guess imma have to rely on my pile of prized Beanie Babies to carry me through my golden years.

The solution to declining sales is to change the odds more in favor of players. Let them win more and they will play more simple as that. This is especially easy with games like scratch tickets where you control the total number of ticket, the number of tickets that are winners, and the total amount of prizes awarded. Barring low selling games and having a lot of the big winners in that game early, it is easy math to calculate total sales expected minus total payout in prizes.

I think MA has the best lottery odds of any state actually.

That's why sales are declining because the state lottery changed the odds a few years ago when they revamped all the scratch tickets.

I never understood why this is called a poor tax.

Nobody is forcing them to play.

Is the money I choose to spend on booze to escape my pain a “depression tax”?