The Oppressed Peoples of Next Meal is a colossal, orderly nation, ruled by Bad Bessie with an iron fist, and renowned for its barren, inhospitable landscape, deadly medical pandemics, and suspicion of poets. The hard-nosed, hard-working, cynical, humorless, devout population of 6.888 billion Next Mealians are kept under strict control by the oppressive government, which measures its success by the nation's GDP and refers to individual citizens as "human resources."

The enormous, corrupt government prioritizes Administration, with Industry, Healthcare, and Environment also on the agenda, while Welfare is ignored. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of The Pasture. The average income tax rate is 98.5%.

The frighteningly efficient Next Mealian economy, worth a remarkable 1,994 trillion Helping Hands a year, is quite specialized and mostly comprised of black market activity, especially in Retail, Furniture Restoration, Uranium Mining, and Basket Weaving. Average income is an amazing 289,630 Helping Hands, but there is a large disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 1,188,727 per year while the poor average 46,590, a ratio of 25.5 to 1.

Next Mealian doors require a Ph.D. to open, the booming slave trade is now government-funded, door-to-door salesmen are frequently beaten up by 'vigilantes', and official maps have to be revised on a weekly basis. Crime is so common that it is unusual to encounter someone following the law, perhaps because of the country's complete lack of prisons. Next Meal's national animal is the Handsy Human, which is also the nation's favorite main course.

Next Meal is ranked 23,925^th in the world and 201^st in 10000 Islands for Largest Manufacturing Sector, scoring 19,047.61 on the Gooback-Jerbs Productivity Index.