The Republic of Acqua di Gio

Overview
The Republic of Acqua di Gio is a huge, safe nation, renowned for its barren, inhospitable landscape, ban on automobiles, and punitive income tax rates. The hard-nosed population of 216 million Acqua di Gioans are fiercely patriotic and enjoy great social equality; they tend to view other, more capitalist countries as somewhat immoral and corrupt.

The large government juggles the competing demands of Welfare, Education, and Law & Order. The average income tax rate is 54.3%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The sizeable but inefficient Acqua di Gioan economy, worth 7.13 trillion Armanis a year, is fairly diversified and led by the Information Technology industry, with significant contributions from Arms Manufacturing, Door-to-door Insurance Sales, and Book Publishing. State-owned companies are common. Average income is 33,032 Armanis, and distributed extremely evenly, with little difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Companies flee the nation rather than pay their fair share of taxes, consumption of cat memes has skyrocketed, Acqua di Gio's free colleges struggle to maintain standards in the face of overwhelming demand, and soldiers are now trained how to make sandwiches properly. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Acqua di Gio's national animal is the Imperialist Lion that enslaves natives, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to widespread deforestation.