The Armed Republic of New Central Iowa is a massive, genial nation, ruled by Lolmun with an even hand, and renowned for its national health service, public floggings, and ubiquitous missile silos. The compassionate, cheerful, devout population of 4.727 billion New Central Iowans 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, Healthcare, and Administration. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Des Moines. The average income tax rate is 79.0%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The all-consuming New Central Iowan economy, worth 580 trillion dollars a year, is fairly diversified and led by the Tourism industry, with major contributions from Book Publishing, Arms Manufacturing, and Information Technology. State-owned companies are reasonably common. Average income is an impressive 122,734 dollars, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Textbooks are exactly twice as heavy as they used to be, homeowners are evicted to make way for new runways, grumpy old house owners demand that pedestrians get off their footpaths, and government theft from poor artists to give to rich allies has been dubbed the "reverse Robin Hood" policy. Crime, especially youth-related, is totally unknown, thanks to a capable police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. New Central Iowa's national animal is the goldfinch, which is also the nation's favorite main course.

New Central Iowa is ranked 13,404^th in the world and 45^th in Thaecia for Highest Food Quality, scoring 141.89 on the Meeshlin-Starr Index.