You really need to see the chart Kevin (Calpundit) Drum found in an Economist article. It shows CEO pay per dollar of company profit over the years. Kevin says:

As the chart shows, during the 80s CEO pay nearly doubled for a given level of corporate profitability, and during the 90s it increased again almost 4x. Overall, a CEO who generates $10 million in net profits today is paid about 7x what a CEO who generated exactly the same amount was paid in 1980.

As he says of CEO pay, "it's not based on performance in any defensible way." Damn straight.