Even at their height, the Scandinavian welfare states left the economy to the private sector--which was then taxed at very high rates to pay for social, cultural and other services. What Swedes, Finns, Danes and Norwegians offered themselves was not collective ownership but the guarantee of collective protection. With the exception of Finland, Scandinavians all had private pension schemes--something that would have seemed very odd to the English or even most Americans in those days. But they looked to the state for almost everything else, and freely accepted the heavy hand of moral intrusion that this entailed.