The People's Republic of Balush is a very large, safe nation, notable for its museums and concert halls, national health service, and punitive income tax rates. The compassionate, democratic population of 251 million Balushians love a good election, and the government gives them plenty of them. Universities tend to be full of students debating the merits of various civil and political rights, while businesses are tightly regulated and the wealthy viewed with suspicion.

The enormous, socially-minded, outspoken government juggles the competing demands of Education, Administration, and Welfare. The average income tax rate is 80.8%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The Balushian economy, worth 16.4 trillion bills a year, is driven entirely by a combination of government and state-owned industry, with private enterprise illegal. The industrial sector is led by the Information Technology industry, with significant contributions from Basket Weaving, Tourism, and Beef-Based Agriculture. Average income is 65,302 bills, and distributed extremely evenly, with little difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

They unpaved paradise and tore up a parking lot (ooh, bop bop bop), Maxtopian villagers starve by the time Balushian officials even file the appropriate paperwork needed to help them, holy matrimony has been wedded to an unwieldy bureaucracy, and mandatory neutering has made purebred dogs a thing of the past. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Balush's national animal is the Pallas's cat, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

Balush is ranked 275,655^th in the world and 489^th in Starlight for Largest Gambling Industry, scoring -7.63 on the Kelly Criterion Productivity Index.