First, a whole lot of things have happened since, to the point that the environment we're operating in now is quite substantially different.
Second, the shallow numbers may mislead in trying to determine what's better - maybe something went right. Higher spending is only bad if we're not getting value for it.
Mostly, it boils down to "you're not going to get very far analyzing it at this level."
My points were two.
First, a whole lot of things have happened since, to the point that the environment we're operating in now is quite substantially different.
Second, the shallow numbers may mislead in trying to determine what's better - maybe something went right. Higher spending is only bad if we're not getting value for it.
Mostly, it boils down to "you're not going to get very far analyzing it at this level."