Spotlight on:

“Doing The Right Thing”

Overview • Factbook • Policies • People • Government • Economy • Rank • Trend • Cards

The Corporate Empire of Machstaat is a gargantuan, cultured nation, ruled by Jennifer Jennings with an even hand, and remarkable for its smutty television, frequent executions, and ubiquitous missile silos. The hard-nosed, cynical, humorless population of 12.731 billion Machstaatians have some civil rights, but not too many, enjoy the freedom to spend their money however they like, to a point, and take part in free and open elections, although not too often.

The relatively small, corrupt government prioritizes Defense, with Industry, Education, and Administration also on the agenda, while Spirituality and International Aid are ignored. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Greatropolis. The average income tax rate is 68.3%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The frighteningly efficient Machstaatian economy, worth a remarkable 4,845 trillion E-Credits a year, is broadly diversified and mostly comprised of black market activity, especially in Arms Manufacturing, Information Technology, Retail, and Book Publishing. State-owned companies are reasonably common. Average income is an amazing 380,617 E-Credits, and distributed extremely evenly, with little difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Citizens can't decide whether to be proud or horrified by the country's colonial history, escaped birthday balloons are torpedoed out of the sky, exports are stamped with "made by the invisible hand you commies", and being sent to collections is more dangerous than ever. Crime is pervasive, perhaps because of the country's complete lack of prisons. Machstaat's national animal is the amoeba, which is also the nation's favorite main course.

Machstaat is ranked 315,139^th in the world and 13,034^th in Lazarus for Most Primitive, scoring -868.88 on the Scary Big Number Scale.