The Budding Forest of Grace Wellesley Thayer is a massive, orderly nation, ruled by Welly Thayer with an iron fist, and remarkable for its keen interest in outer space, irreverence towards religion, and suspicion of poets. The hard-nosed, hard-working, cynical population of 1.883 billion Thayerians enjoy great individual freedoms in everything except elections, which, where they exist at all, are populist shams for a dictatorship government that has no intention of ever giving up power.

The relatively small, liberal, well-organized government juggles the competing demands of Education, Industry, and Healthcare. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Saint-Paul-de-Vence. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 11.6%.

The frighteningly efficient Thayerian economy, worth 195 trillion wellies a year, is broadly diversified and led by the Information Technology industry, with major contributions from Retail, Soda Sales, and Uranium Mining. Average income is an impressive 104,068 wellies, but there is a significant disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 306,704 per year while the poor average 27,786, a ratio of 11.0 to 1.

Cyber-crime and tin-foil hat sales are both increasing at record rates, bouncers at the door of the sweet shop warn five-year-olds not to cause trouble, only the richest get to see out of their windows, and the regional delicacy of chocolate bombes is deadlier than an unexploded bomb. Crime is totally unknown. Grace Wellesley Thayer's national animal is the elk, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests, and its national religion is Thayerian deference.

Grace Wellesley Thayer is ranked 60,023^rd in the world and 977^th in the South Pacific for Largest Gambling Industry, scoring 3,987.55 on the Kelly Criterion Productivity Index.