The State of Oelrich is a gargantuan, socially progressive nation, ruled by the Governor with a fair hand, and remarkable for its irreverence towards religion and spontaneously combusting cars. The hard-nosed, hard-working, democratic population of 43.488 billion Oelrichians are effectively ruled by a group of massive corporations, who run for political office and provide their well-off citizens with world-class goods and services. Their poorer citizens, however, are mostly starving to death while being urged to go out and get real jobs. The populace has reasonably extensive civil rights, although these are mostly aimed at allowing them to buy whatever they like.

The large, pro-business government juggles the competing demands of Education, Industry, and International Aid. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 32.8%.

The strong Oelrichian economy, worth a remarkable 1,332 trillion betales a year, is highly specialized and led by the Woodchip Exports industry, with significant contributions from Trout Farming, Basket Weaving, and Book Publishing. Average income is 30,637 betales, but there is a vast disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 208,298 per year while the poor average 1,646, a ratio of 126 to 1.

Students are known to arrive at school in their pyjamas, foreigners are treated with great suspicion, The Governor has just been declared ruler of Oelrich in an international press conference, and the government's official stance on religion is that it is so very silly. Crime, especially youth-related, is a serious problem. Oelrich's national animal is the deer.

Oelrich is ranked 122,454^th in the world and 1^st in Oelrich for Most Cultured, scoring 64 on the Snufflebottom-Wiggendum Pentatonic Scale.