This week, it was revealed that retail giant Walmart and H&M took capitalist greed  to a new level by slashing and burning what they could not sell. For these pillars of capitalism, instead of taking unsold items to sample sales or donating them to people in need (and there are many, especially in these very tough economic times where one-third of New York City’s population is poor), H&M and Wal-Mart have been throwing them out in giant trash bags. For good measure and to ensure that people who stumble on these bags of unsold items do not try to keep or re-sell them, these companies have gone ahead and slashed up garments, cut off the sleeves of coats, and sliced holes in shoes so they are unwearable. Hundreds of Wal-Mart tagged items with holes made in them have been found dumped: “gloves with the fingers cut off, warm socks, cute patent leather Mary Jane school shoes, maybe for fourth graders, with the instep cut up with a scissor, men’s jackets, slashed across the body and the arms. The puffy fiber fill was coming out in big white cotton balls.”

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