The Incorporated States of Second Best Pack Storage 8 is a colossal, cultured nation, renowned for its museums and concert halls, pith helmet sales, and keen interest in outer space. The hard-nosed, hard-working, humorless, devout population of 6.473 billion Second Best Pack Storage 8ians are highly moralistic and fiercely conservative, in the sense that they tend to believe most things should be outlawed. People who have good jobs and work quietly at them are lauded; others are viewed with suspicion.

The large, corrupt government juggles the competing demands of Administration, Industry, and Law & Order. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 93.1%.

The frighteningly efficient Second Best Pack Storage 8ian economy, worth a remarkable 1,205 trillion cards a year, is broadly diversified and mostly comprised of black market activity, especially in Retail, Beef-Based Agriculture, Book Publishing, and Uranium Mining. State-owned companies are reasonably common. Average income is an impressive 186,221 cards, but there is a significant disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 589,506 per year while the poor average 44,882, a ratio of 13.1 to 1.

The government subsidises medicines of mass destruction, pharmacists increasingly claim they are morally obligated to take long lunches, doctors who mutter "Oh my God" often lose their medical license, and ten-year-olds are applying for lemonade stand operator licences. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a very well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Second Best Pack Storage 8's national animal is the legendary, which is also the nation's favorite main course.

Second Best Pack Storage 8 is ranked 278,995^th in the world and 2,338^th in Two for Most Cheerful Citizens, with 30.63 Percentage Of Water Glasses Perceived Half-Full.