Gary Johnson: My response to the presidential debate

• Job prospects for young people are lousy.
• We're also piling debt on to the next generation.
• All of these burdens can be fixed with real leadership.

Third-party candidates were not invited to participate in the presidential debates. USA TODAY invited them -- and their vice presidential candidates -- to provide answers to one question from each debate. Here's Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson's answer to the question from a 20-year-old college student about his prospects for employment after graduation:

Young people in America today are getting screwed. Not only are job prospects lousy, but today's college students and others in their generation are being welcomed to adulthood with $16 trillion in public debt, a broken Medicare system they will have to pay for -- with no assurance it will be there when they need it, and a government that is more determined than ever to destroy their privacy and civil liberties.

On top of all that, today's young people are the ones being sent to fight and lose their lives in wars we should not be fighting and which have no clear U.S. security interest.

All of these burdens can be fixed with real leadership. We don't have to wait decades to stop printing and borrowing money to finance a government that is too big and too costly. We can cut spending and stop piling debt on young Americans.

We can fix programs such as Medicare and Social Security, but not with the timid Republican and Democrat promises to somehow "stabilize" them without reducing costs. We can stop sending young Americans on nation-building and interventionist missions on the other side of the globe.

And to create abundant job opportunities for young people and all Americans, we can scrap a tax code that absurdly penalizes the productivity, investment and growth that must occur for jobs to be created. Replace taxes on income with a single federal consumption tax, as I advocate, and millions of jobs will be created in a very short period of time.

There is no reason for the future to not be bright -- with a little leadership and courage in Washington that has sadly been MIA for too long.

In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes diverse opinions from outside writers, including our Board of Contributors.