Spotlight on:

“Mars”

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

The Red Planet of Mars is a gargantuan, efficient nation, ruled by Marsipulami with a fair hand, and notable for its smutty television, sprawling nuclear power plants, and suspicion of poets. The hard-nosed, hard-working, democratic, humorless population of 31.297 billion Marsians are effectively ruled by a group of massive corporations, who run for political office and provide their well-off citizens with world-class goods and services. Their poorer citizens, however, are mostly starving to death while being urged to go out and get real jobs. The populace has reasonably extensive civil rights, although these are mostly aimed at allowing them to buy whatever they like.

The tiny, corrupt government juggles the competing demands of Defense, Industry, and Education. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Martialicity. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 5.4%.

The frighteningly efficient Marsian economy, worth a remarkable 5,179 trillion ice cubes a year, is broadly diversified and led by the Information Technology industry, with major contributions from Arms Manufacturing, Gambling, and Door-to-door Insurance Sales. Black market activity is notable. Average income is an impressive 165,480 ice cubes, but there is a vast disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 1,082,967 per year while the poor average 9,941, a ratio of 108 to 1.

Corrupt Party bureaucrats are being voted out of office in overwhelming numbers, even the nation's brussel sprouts are delicious and nutritious, the government is seen as openly hostile to all religion, and government ministers are regularly seen in the streets confessing their sins and hammering missiles into plow-shares. Crime is pervasive, probably because of the absence of a police force. Mars's national animal is the Marsupilami franquini, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to widespread deforestation, and its national religion is Science.

Mars is ranked 696^th in the world and 1^st in SPACE for Largest Insurance Industry, scoring 11,852.29 on the Risk Expulsion Effectiveness Rating.