A new ranking of top CEO compensation how nonsensical pay for top dogs has become, argues Slate business and economics correspondent Matthew Yglesias.

On behalf of The New York Times, Equilar Inc. compiled a list of the 200 most highly paid chief executives at public companies with at least $1 billion in revenue.

Compensation seems unrelated to company size or performance, Yglesias says.

Editor's Note: Startling Proof of the End of America’s Middle Class. Details in the Video

"Executives are compensated lavishly but arbitrarily, and there’s no end in sight to the upward trajectory."

For example, Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman took home $33.4 million in total compensation in 2012.

Leslie Moonves of CBS got $60.4 million, almost twice as much, even though CBS is only two notches above Viacom on the revenue ranking.

And Robert Iger of Disney took home $37.1 million.

"Disney, which is more than twice as big as CBS or Viacom, had $42.3 billion in 2012 revenue," Yglesias notes, "and its stock did better than the other companies in 2012, too.

"So is Iger underpaid? Or perhaps Moonves is overpaid? Nobody knows."

The problem is that nobody knows how to judge a CEO's worth, Yglesias argues. Should it be stock price or more long-term strategic measures? Absolute return or returns relative to the entire market?

"There's enough ambiguity that you could argue a given case in many different ways."

The rankings show that CEO pay in the media sector is high even compared with CEO pay in other sectors and that American CEOs are paid more that CEOs of other nationalities are. For instance, John Watson of Chevron received $22.3 million in 2012, although Chevron is larger than Viacom or CBS. But while Watson got $18.1 million in 2011, Christophe de Margerie of French oil giant Total S.A. got a just $3 million.

In defense, American executives say they should be paid a lot because other American executives are paid a lot.

"If you tried convincing one of these very same executives that he shouldn’t replace an American factory worker with a cheaper Chinese one, he would laugh you out of the room."

Company boards often focus too much on short-term results at the expense of long-term goals, some argue.

"We need compensation that is aligned to long-term value drivers, like innovation," Mark Van Clieaf of the consulting firm MVC Associates International tells The Times. "Yet at probably 70 to 80 percent of companies, there are no metrics for measuring the impact of new products or services that were launched."

Boards must consider research and development costs and return on invested capital, Van Clieaf explains.

"Corporate boards, pay advisers and proxy governance firms need to rethink how they assess what executives are doing. And it’s time for long-horizon investors to demand performance metrics and long-term inventive pay alignment."

Editor's Note: Startling Proof of the End of America’s Middle Class. Details in the Video