The Republic of Papierlund is a mid-sized, cultured nation, renowned for its irreverence towards religion, punitive income tax rates, and stringent health and safety legislation. The compassionate, democratic population of 98 million Papierlundians are free to do what they want with their own bodies, and vote for whomever they like in elections; if they go into business, however, they are regulated to within an inch of their lives.

The enormous, liberal, socially-minded government juggles the competing demands of Welfare, Administration, and Education. The average income tax rate is 69.7%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The basket case Papierlundian economy, worth 941 billion Centances 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 mostly made up of the Trout Farming industry, with significant contributions from Pizza Delivery and Tourism. Average income is 9,607 Centances, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Incarcerated crime lords manage their empires from massage tables, elementary school children develop thousand-yard stares, the words guilty and evidence have left the Papierlundian lexicon, and they say that Papierlundians made a dessert and called it peace. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Papierlund's national animal is the Bookworm, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

Papierlund is ranked 68,511^th in the world and 427^th in The Leftist Assembly for Most Cultured, scoring 69 on the Snufflebottom-Wiggendum Pentatonic Scale.