The State of Stepping Stone is a gargantuan, genial nation, renowned for its irreverence towards religion, punitive income tax rates, and stringent health and safety legislation. The cynical population of 16.283 billion Stepping Stoneans are ruled without fear or favor by a psychotic dictator, who outlaws just about everything and refers to the populace as "my little playthings."

The enormous, moralistic, socially-minded, well-organized government prioritizes Law & Order, with Welfare, Public Transport, and Education also on the agenda. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Capital Heights. The average income tax rate is 69.2%, and even higher for the wealthy.

The large but stagnant Stepping Stonean economy, worth 115 trillion betales 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 mostly made up of the Trout Farming industry, with significant contributions from Furniture Restoration. Average income is 7,093 betales, and distributed extremely evenly, with practically no difference between the richest and poorest citizens.

Military funding has been stripped back, it is illegal to make racist remarks in public, a large-scale revitalization of the education system is underway, and Stepping Stone has designated Capital Heights as its capital city. Crime is totally unknown, thanks to a very well-funded police force and progressive social policies in education and welfare. Stepping Stone's national animal is the deer, which frolics freely in the nation's many lush forests.

Stepping Stone is ranked 224,123^rd in the world and 7^th in Sao Paulo for Most Subsidized Industry, scoring 221.44 on the Gilded Widget Scale.