Fuel taxes and firms: A cosy partnership

January will be a quiet month for blogging here, but once the numbers start rolling out I’ll start writing again. One thing that I saw that interesting me was this short quote from Greg Mankiw’s blog:

“The nation’s largest business group said Tuesday it will oppose big tax increases in 2008 but might support increases targeted at improving aging U.S. roads, bridges and railways.”

Now many of our clients at Infometrics also feel the same way (many of which are transport firms). Why do you think firms’ currently support an increase in taxes on fuel but not on labour? Does this relate to the same factors that have made firms’ in NZ not care too much about an increase in the minimum wage?