Forget all these other discussions. It's all perception. Complete opinion with no facts:

• The internet left the realm of ugly static html and became interactive with ugly CGI scripts. Much of this is thanks to perl. As companies put real systems on the internet they needed something better than that old ugly stuff, perl got a bad rap from alot of that old code. Java was shiny and new and promised to look good.
• Java has corporate marketing and sponsorship. This makes it legit. Perl is grassroots. This makes it ill-legit.
• Java is hard to learn. This makes you smarter and more valuable if you put it on your resume. Perl allows you to start with easy code and grow into things just as complex as Java, if you choose. Easy stuff isn't worth alot of money.
• Java has forced people to upgrade to 21 inch monitors in order to be able to read an entire line of wordy code. A 21" monitor is expensive, therefore, Java developers have had to ask for more more money, to buy better hardware. You can write perl anyway you want.
• Java requires alot of memory, but luckily memory is really cheap. Therefore, the java mantra has become, "ram is cheap, buy more." Perl projects as big as Java projects can also consume mucho amounts of ram, but the perl mantra is TMTOWTDI.
• A perl programmer can do anything, and may often try to prove it. A java programmer cannot churn out as much code as fast as a perl programmer, thus more developers are needed. Java is more expensive than perl, it must be better.

I could go on and on like this, but I think you get my point...