Wrath actually changed the status quo in regards to this. The stat disparity occurred because of the switch to 4 raiding formats and essentially making the difference in the bottom end of the tier to the top end being 26ilvls instead of 13. So we essentially had 6 tiers of gear in 4 raids. Without this we would have ended at 252 and around 8k DPS. Cata wouldn't have had to be as absurd as it was to compensate and hard reset the gear. It has lead to this happening mid PvP season:
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/2...-in-a-day-now/
Quite simply the stat inflation is bad for the health of the game and is broken as it is.