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Quarrying and aggregate supply firm Breedon believes profits will "significantly exceed expectations" after margins continued to improve in the final few weeks of last year. The company, which has its Scottish headquarters at Ethiebeaton in Angus, said market forecasts for the year look set to be significantly surpassed during a finish which escaped the disruptive influence of winter weather. We don't often think about how macro- and micro-economics can come together, but, for big companies, one is no more important than the other. Not only do you have to think about the margins and competition of your own market, but how your market is doing in general. It doesn't matter if your beating the other guys with a better price and more demand if that price is barely enough to cover what your supplying. On the flipside, your countries economy could be doing great and your factors of production most favorable but, if everyone's getting more benefit from those advantages than you are, it's only a matter of time before get too far a head. This article is a perfect example of where a European company has become enthusiastic about future profit predictions based not only on competition and margin but just on the welfare of the whole country in general

Ok, this one may be a bit of stretch this week but it flows more into "margin" than "negative externality", but stick with me. What I really like about this article was that it could have focused on the Chinese sweat shops or the lack of parking lot security, which, admittedly, are negative externalities, but it went in depth on the differences between the externalities of Costo's labor force as opposed to Wal-Mart's. You see, people really like Costco because it pays it's workers between $11-19 an hour while Wal-Mart only pays $11-12. Many would like to say this is because Wal-Mart is the child of Satan brought to Earth to annihilate humanity and do battle with the son of God... who is also God... And to that I say, "corporations aren't people", but that's besides the point. Wal-Mart doesn't just do this because they want more money and because Costco is socially conscious, it's because the margins are much different between both companies. You may not think about it, but all that organizing and "everything you need is here" costs a lot more than what twice as customers can suffice. A lot of that low paid wage goes towards menial tasks like waiting at a cash register for a half hour before the rush of customers arrive or going from aisle to aisle putting the cereal back on the correct shelf because you're just too lazy to do it yourself. What we don't realize is that, sometimes, the negative externalities that we see are a product of our own self-entitled sentiment.