CAVEAT: I hate adverbs.

“Since 2000, entertainment segment revenue for our employers has grown from $63 billion to $95 billion. That’s a robust 51 percent increase. But as they’ve experienced this tremendous revenue growth, WGA members have actually fallen behind. While entertainment segment revenue has grown at an annual rate of 7 percent over the last 7 years, writers’ earnings and residuals have grown only 3.5 percent. That means we are barely keeping up with inflation.”

It’s disappointing to see the use of absolute values instead of normative values in this public relations battle. The WGA mentions the fact that revenues are growing at 7% over the last 7 years, but throws in the absolute percentage change (51%) to cloud the issue.

What the WGA fails to address is the primary focus of the Income Statement: Net Income. Revenue growth as a metric is meaningless unless paired with some other key data like Cost of Goods Sold and more importantly the Net Income the industry is taking as a whole.

In reference to my caveat earlier, the use of the term “barely” to make the statement regarding inflation is the worst form of qualitative detritus of the mouth.