KISS’s GENE SIMMONS: “TRY BEING NICE TO RICH PEOPLE”

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KISS’s GENE SIMMONS ignites conflagration of controversy by seemingly sticking his forked tongue out at the poor and disenfranchised.
 
“I have been part of the 1 percent for the past 30 years,” Simmons boasted to the San Diego Union Tribune
 
And?
 
“It’s fantastic! The 1 percent pays 80 percent of all the taxes. Fifty percent odf the population of the U.S. pays NO taxes. The 1 percent provides all the jobs for everybody else. If the 1 percent didn’t exist, there would be chaos and the American economy would drop dead. Try being nice to rich people.
 
“I don’t remember the last poor person who gave me a job.”
 
The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler took it upon himself to fact-check Simmons’ statement and claims Simmons' understanding of how taxes work is flawed.
 
“Simmons may enjoy the 1 percent lifestyle, but he needs to get his facts straight,” Kessler wrote in the DC paper. 
 
“The top 1 percent certainly pays a large share of taxes (and has a large share of income) but his claims are wildly off-base, especially when talking about ‘all taxes.’”
 
Simmons, one of the four founders of the seminal rock group, Kiss, which burst unfettered onto an unsuspecting world in 1973 and gone through multiple line-up changes due to internal feuding is a mega millionaire. Simmons  oversees the vast money making franchise that have ranged from a Marvel comic book, Kiss M&Ms, Kiss coffins, lunchboxes, a Kiss golf course and more.
 
In 2011 Simmons told CNN that the Kiss brand was worth in excess of between $1 billion and $5 billion.
 
Simmons admits that he is “shameless” and “proud” of being an American success story – the son of Jewish -Hungarian immigrants – he grew up in Queens, New York embracing his love of monster movies and rock music.
 
Something that Simmons has since turned into a veritable empire.