The United States of Lightburg is a colossal, orderly nation, renowned for its museums and concert halls, avant-garde cinema, and frequent executions. The hard-nosed, hard-working, cynical, devout population of 3.365 billion Lightburgians 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 medium-sized, corrupt, well-organized government juggles the competing demands of Industry, Education, and Law & Order. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 37.1%.

The frighteningly efficient Lightburgian economy, worth 337 trillion dollars a year, is broadly diversified and led by the Uranium Mining industry, with major contributions from Arms Manufacturing, Information Technology, and Book Publishing. Black market activity is frequent. State-owned companies are reasonably common. Average income is an impressive 100,312 dollars, but there is a significant disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 328,429 per year while the poor average 23,012, a ratio of 14.3 to 1.

Tombstones are ten feet high to accommodate the names of inhabitants, modelling agencies send their clients to work in nursing homes, five-year-olds chanting "Little Miss Muffet" are accused of bullying arachnophobes, and the nanny industry has had a boom after maternity leave was recently banned. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a capable police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Lightburg's national animal is the lion, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to widespread deforestation.

Lightburg is ranked 29,520^th in the world and 4^th in Starland for Highest Disposable Incomes, with 63,096.6 Standard Monetary Units.