Agree, with one caveat. "maximum benefit of it's people includes opportunity for business and jobs in the private sector. Not just sustaining over-sized government. 
I think that many more people are willing to do their fair share when they see Government make real cuts to a sustainable size and they see people who do not even attempt to live responsibly and support themselves take on their share of the load.   
The first place they cut is cops, firefighters, and teachers seemingly to inflict maximum pain so everyone will fall in line. Girdwood  troopers.
Labor contracts are another. The smallest cuts get written off as having no real effect, so why bother. It's a mindset that says we gotta have everything we think we should have, then we will get to the little people.
Maximum benefit of the people should not mean that the government takes the lion's share of wealth produced and then doles it out, evenly, to it's constituents like a mother bird feeding a bunch of squawking baby birds.