The Mystery of A Slanted Black Stripe is a gargantuan, safe nation, ruled by The Reluctant Delegate with an even hand, and remarkable for its museums and concert halls, national health service, and keen interest in outer space. The compassionate, cheerful population of 32.66 billion Slantees are fiercely patriotic and enjoy great social equality; they tend to view other, more capitalist countries as somewhat immoral and corrupt.

The large, socially-minded government juggles the competing demands of Education, Environment, and Healthcare. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of San Francisco. The average income tax rate is 95.0%.

The frighteningly efficient Slanted Black Stripean economy, worth a remarkable 6,038 trillion stripenotes a year, is highly specialized and led by the Book Publishing industry, with major contributions from Tourism, Information Technology, and Furniture Restoration. State-owned companies are common. Average income is an impressive 184,890 stripenotes, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Recognizing the Slanted Black Stripean flag qualifies you for citizenship, professionals are ready to retire by the time they receive permission to use their credentials, foreign policy is to avoid standing up to bullies, and power stations shutting down at night has made bedtime reading tricky. Crime is totally unknown. A Slanted Black Stripe's national animal is the zebra, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests, and its national religion is All are Welcome.

A Slanted Black Stripe is ranked 291,038^th in the world and 5,117^th in The East Pacific for Largest Automobile Manufacturing Sector, scoring -28.32 on the Henry Ford Productivity Index.