Alternative to Social Security?

WASHINGTON — For 5 million American workers, including Kansas City's police officers and firefighters, the debate over Social Security overhaul has little meaning: They're already exempt from the system.

So are most of Missouri's teachers.

That class of public sector workers — who don't pay taxes into Social Security during their working years and don't receive Social Security benefits when they retire — accounts for about 6 percent of the U.S. work force.

Instead of Social Security, they pay into pension funds that invest in stocks, bonds and other investment instruments, much as President Bush wants individual Americans to be allowed to do with a portion of their Social Security payroll taxes.

But as the fight in Washington heats up over how to reform the massive safety net, opinions vary as to whether such pension systems — many of them quite successful — could be copied on a larger scale.