Jimmy D writes on www.simplyjimmyd.com: I chuckle each time AdultFYI’s Gene Ross sub-titles or titles his updates with tongue-in-cheek words like, “Kat Sunlove out as multi-billion industry has more casualties” and “Billion $ Industry Pays Hundreds at a Time.”

The hyper-inflated claims of this industry’s financial prowess have long been a source of amusement to me:

“It’s bigger than Hollywood!”

“It makes more in revenues than major league sports!”

Or how about, “It’s a ten-billion-dollar industry! No! It’s a twelve-billion-dollar… fourteen-billion dollar…”

Negroes please. (Can I still say that? Michael Richards notwithstanding?)

Here’s the deal: If this industry were anywhere close to generating the kind of money that it claims to generate, many, if not most all of us who work in porn, are the biggest bunch of exploited morons in entertainment history! Where’s all the billionaires? Where’s all the hundred-millionaires? Hell, where’s all the millionaires? (At least, amongst the ranks of porn’s cast and crew people)

If Hollywood can routinely afford to pay so many of it’s actors millions of dollars for peformances-I’m talking about star caliber actors and actresses-why can’t porn afford to pay its stars anything close to that? If major league baseball can pay so many players millions and millions of dollars, why can’t porn do the same? After all, porn is bigger than Hollywood and bigger than baseball, right? If porn were all it claims to be, stars like Tera Patrick and Jenna Jameson should be able to routinely command fees that exceed what Hollywood stars like Nicole Kidman and Julia Roberts are paid. Although I’m confident Tera and Jenna do pretty well for themselves, I don’t think they’re seeing the kind of paychecks Nicole and Julia see.

The same holds true for many crew positions: People like Directors and Directors of Photography and Photographers and others.

The fashion industry, as an example, pays many photographers hundreds of thousands of dollars for their work. When’s the last time you heard of a porn photographer-make that a photographer who works in an industry that, supposedly, dwarfs fashion’s advertising industry in terms of revenue-anything close to that for a single shoot? You haven’t… heard that, that is.

There’s simple reason for this: Exploited morons aside, porn-as an industry and in terms of its revenues-simply ain’t what it claims to be. Never has been. And it’s quickly becoming less-so by the day.