. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

True. Such as, say, building and maintaining public roads, bridges, infrastructure in general, ...

I'd not even go so far as 'true'. If we simply substituted 'the market' for 'the government', we'd get to 'The market cannot give to anybody anything that the market does not first take from somebody else.'
Is that also true? If it is, then there can be no growth, which would be an odd stance for an economist. Otherwise, adapting Margeret Thatcher's famous (mis)quote that there is no such thing as society, then there is no such thing as the market: there are only market-traders. Then you need to come up with an explanation why one particular trader, the government, is at a unique disadvantage to other traders whereby they all have the means to conjure something out of nothing but it is inherently impossible for a government.