Individualism, privacy, property, competition: This conceptual constellation gave the political right a way to talk to people beyond the material appeal of their policies. Rather than the government providing a basis for individuality by spreading the costs of independence and creating a fair field of play, the Reaganites promised to simply get the state out of the way. But the irony of Hooverian governance is that it requires a fleet of government bureaucrats in order to oppose government bureaucracy. As the Hoover Institution entered the White House, Anderson and company became strange technocrats, tweaking the rules in little ways that they predicted would make big differences—the definition of efficiency, after all. Their main tools were deregulation, privatization, and tax cuts, which all reinforced one another. They continued work already begun by congressional Republicans, who cut the capital gains tax back down to Jazz Age levels and sliced the top marginal rate so hard that they redefined the levy from something political and more or less confiscatory to just another tax. Deregulation made new gains easier to invest, and stocks reversed their 1960s and ’70s slide and even longer period of relative indifference. The rusty gears of financial capitalism creaked and turned once more, beginning two decades of explosive American stock growth. Organized labor was able to soften the blow of industry deregulation to some degree by pushing workers’ pension assets into the booming equities market. Here was an alternative road to socialism: Workers could buy the companies, just like anyone else. But the unions didn’t generally manage their voting shares—that job went to the banks they hired, and the banks voted with management when it came to undermining workers. Instead of purchasing the means of production, they ended up loaning their retirement accounts back to their bosses. Labor bifurcation drove stock and home prices higher as the economic surplus flowed to upper-income Americans, who were more likely to buy houses and stocks. The Bay Area led the trend; median home prices nearly tripled in San Francisco and Santa Clara Counties during the 1980s.16 Consumer credit expanded via loans, home equity lines, and credit cards. Existing owners benefited, even if they were also on the wrong end of bifurcation as workers. This was the new ideological admixture made flesh.