A CONCEPTUALIZATION OF A MICRO‐CREDIT UNION — WORKERS COOPERATIVE TO ASSIST PEOPLE TO DEVELOP SELF‐EMPLOYMENT

Throughout the twentieth century, nations defined their responses to the heaves of the market's boom‐and‐bust cycles through the interplay between people's demands and their governments. The variations of that struggle were reflected in the variations among national policies; but, across virtually all industrialized nations, there gradually emerged a consensus around the necessity for greater security to be built into the institutions of society. In hindsight, the emergence of the welfare state appears as a rational response to this pattern of economic development, indeed as a precondition of its continuance.