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“To falter is to fail!”

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The Facetious Laughter of Etsu is a mammoth, safe nation, ruled by Etto with a fair hand, and remarkable for its compulsory military service, punitive income tax rates, and stringent health and safety legislation. The democratic population of 5.883 billion Etsunis love a good election, and the government gives them plenty of them. Universities tend to be full of students debating the merits of various civil and political rights, while businesses are tightly regulated and the wealthy viewed with suspicion.

The enormous, socially-minded government juggles the competing demands of Defense, Education, and Welfare. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Cethosia. The average income tax rate is 66.3%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The large but sluggish Etsuvian economy, worth 113 trillion corset eyelets a year, is driven entirely by a combination of government and state-owned industry, with private enterprise illegal. The industrial sector, which is quite specialized, is led by the Book Publishing industry, with major contributions from Tourism, Uranium Mining, and Woodchip Exports. Average income is 19,368 corset eyelets, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Defense lawyers suggestively note to juries how flagrantly happy victims were, veteran cops reminisce over their heavy armor days, politicians tend to speak more loudly and slowly these days, and election ballot papers are so long that unused ones are recycled as toilet roll. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a very well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Etsu's national animal is the trifolium-repens, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests, and its national religion is condescension.

Etsu is ranked 64,719^th in the world and 10^th in Beating Brian Up Gang for Most Cultured, scoring 69 on the Snufflebottom-Wiggendum Pentatonic Scale.