Are we on wrong side of capitalism???

I saw this wallpaper saying " I am on the wrong side of capitalism". Profound statement made me think about the statement. Then I came across this article. Again the same feeling. So are we on the wrong side of capitalism? I shouldnt generalize this because some of the readers may be on the right side of the Capitalism.

United States Executive pay goes off the scale
SOURCE: The Guardian

Hewlett Packard has had a costly few months. Chief executive Carly Fiorina took $42m with her when she was forced out of the computer and printer maker after failing to deliver on profits. Her replacement, Mark Hurd, was then given a $20m golden hello. That, of course, was in addition to his annual salary, which could reach $22m a year. Whatever the hand wringing about pay scales in Britain, they are dwarfed by the cash and perks lavished on executives in corporate America. Examples are easy to find. Richard Grasso, the former head of the New York Stock Exchange was ousted after it emerged he had accrued $190m in deferred compensation; Philip Purcell, the boss of Morgan Stanley, the underperforming Wall Street bank, was forced out and pocketed $113m; the top three executives of Viacom shared a total of $160m last year. Stan O'Neal, of Merrill Lynch, earned $32m in 2004; Richard Fauld, at Lehman Brothers, got $26.3m, and James Cayne, at Bear Stearns, got almost $25m.

A journalist worked out that it would take someone on the US minimum wage around 11,000 years to earn the $109m banked last year by Yahoo chief Terry Semel. After a couple of years of moderate falls in compensation, following the end of the technology boom and a slew of corporate scandals, executive pay in the US was back on the rise again last year. A survey of the top 179 companies by the consultancy Pearl Meyer found that the average payout for chief executives rose 13% in 2004 to $10.5m. The average bonus was up 24% to $2.3m. Chief executive pay in the US has risen dramatically over the past 25 years, going into overdrive during the 1990s boom. Figures published by the labour federation, the AFL-CIO, show how far the gap has grown. In 1980, a chief executive made $42 for every dollar earned by a blue-collar worker. By 1990, that gap was $85. But the real gains in the boardroom were made in the decade that followed as firms ramped up share options. By 2000, chief executives were earning $531 for every dollar taken home by a typical worker. Another way of looking at the growth is that the compensation given to the top five executives in a company accounted for about 10% of that firm's earnings in 2003, compared to 5% in 1995, according to a Harvard study. Paul Hodgson a compensation expert at the consultancy Corporate Library, said the increases have two points of origin; stock options riding the bull market, and what he calls the "ratchet" effect. "A chief executive will look around at peers and say 'I want what he is getting'," he says. He believes the increases can only continue. When executive salaries hit the political radar in the US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, in a rare pithy moment, described the "infectious greed" that had taken hold of corporate America during the late 1990s that led to fraud at the likes of Enron, WorldCom and Global Crossing. In the years that followed the boom salaries did fall, chiefly due to the drop in the value of stock options. According to the Harvard study, which stretches back to 1993, chief executive pay fell from an average of $17.4m in 2000 among the broad S&P 500 index of companies, to $9.1m in 2003. But the recovery of the markets means chief executive compensation is again edging higher. Mr Hodgson says that a key problem is that American investors are not as vocal as they are in Britain. If there is no concerted effort to curb excessive executive pay in the US, there is at least growing concern about rewards for failure. Shareholders in Morgan Stanley are rolling up their sleeves for a fight over Mr Purcell's riches. More perverse was the deal offered to co-president Stephen Crawford: $32m over the next two years or the entire sum upfront if he quit. Not surprisingly, he quit. Salaries and bonuses are not the only way that executives are getting rich - there are also retirement plans, golden hellos and windfalls when a firm is bought. Gillette chief executive James Kilts, for instance, will get around $95m from selling the firm to Procter & Gamble due to a clause in his contract. Hank McKinnell, the chairman and chief executive of Pfizer, will be paid $6.5m a year in pension benefits after he retires while Lee Raymond at Exxon Mobil will get $5.9m a year, at a time when many companies are paring back the pensions they pay to ordinary workers. Other perks have previously gone almost unnoticed but pressure from investors and regulators is forcing better disclosure. Bank of America recently disclosed it paid $36,000 for security at chief executive Kenneth Lewis's home, in addition to his $22m salary. It is not uncommon for shareholders to foot the bill for a chairman's club membership. In April, Viacom disclosed that it was reimbursing co-presidents Leslie Moonves and Thomas Freston for sleeping in their own homes on business, on top of their $20m salaries.