The People's Republic of Aspach is a mid-sized, environmentally stunning nation, remarkable for its irreverence towards religion, hatred of cheese, and punitive income tax rates. The compassionate, cynical population of 72 million Aspachians are ruled with an iron fist by the socialist government, which grants its people the freedom to do whatever they like so long as it doesn't involve getting richer than anybody else or challenging the government.

The enormous, liberal, socially-minded, well-organized government juggles the competing demands of Education, Administration, and Welfare. The average income tax rate is 72.2%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The basket case Aspachian economy, worth 898 billion Aspes a year, is driven entirely by a combination of government and state-owned industry, with private enterprise illegal. The industrial sector, which is quite specialized, is led by the Information Technology industry, with major contributions from Book Publishing, Trout Farming, and Arms Manufacturing. Average income is 12,474 Aspes, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

There's sophisticated talk of revolution within the ever-expanding mining colonies, buses are widely regarded as the safest way to travel, the nation's atlases tend to go out of date every few weeks, and there's a bright dawn ahead for Aspach. Crime is totally unknown, thanks to a well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Aspach's national animal is the Martin, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

Aspach is ranked 182,838^th in the world and 705^th in Europe for Largest Trout Fishing Sector, scoring 724.91 on the Nemo Depletion Efficiency Index.