They could not do it alone, however. How would they sell individualism to the unemployed? Promising to whip inflation helped, but elements of the working class had to be persuaded to accept a cure that, for them, was probably worse than the disease. California, where liberals experienced serious setbacks as wealth flowed into the state, suggested a plan. By reducing the size of the social surplus available to the working class and poor, they could deepen fissures within the broad category of wage earners. Cutting taxes, especially for the rich, thinned the budgetary air for everyone else. Spending lots of money on defense, particularly the Silicon Valley high-tech kind, redirected tax revenue back into ownership pockets and expanded its non-union bifurcated labor forces. Whereas Nixon cut defense in order to provide social services, Reagan increased defense spending to justify a cut in social services. Like conservatives in California, the Reagan administration expected a significant portion of white people to abandon the liberal consensus in favor of a new vibrant conservative individualism.