The United Socialist States of The Stag is a colossal, efficient nation, renowned for its museums and concert halls, multi-spousal wedding ceremonies, and punitive income tax rates. The compassionate, cynical population of 8.634 billion Stagians are ruled with an iron fist by the dictatorship government, which ensures that no-one outside the party gets too rich. In their personal lives, however, citizens are relatively unoppressed; it remains to be seen whether this is because the government genuinely cares about its people, or if it hasn't gotten around to stamping out civil rights yet.

The government — a sprawling, bureaucracy-choked, socially-minded morass — juggles the competing demands of Healthcare, Education, and Administration. The average income tax rate is 91.7%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The all-consuming Stagian economy, worth 779 trillion marks a year, is driven entirely by a combination of government and state-owned industry, with private enterprise illegal. The industrial sector, which is highly specialized, is led by the Trout Farming industry, with major contributions from Book Publishing and Information Technology. Average income is 90,328 marks, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

A degree of self-hatred is vital for a future in politics, most towns have their Leader High School located on Leader Street, the nation's only university is the School of Hard Knocks, and children are raised bilingual from an early age. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a very well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. The Stag's national animal is the Stag, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

The Stag is ranked 15,776^th in the world and 970^th in Lazarus for Highest Food Quality, scoring 131.92 on the Meeshlin-Starr Index.