Labor & Economy
Mark Lacter, 59

This morning L.A. Observed disclosed the death of its business editor and writer, Mark Lacter. LAO editor-in-chief Kevin Roderick reported that Lacter’s “wife, the author Laura Levine, told me that Mark suffered a stroke yesterday and could not survive the bleeding on his brain. He was 59 and died at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center.”
A former Los Angeles Business Journal editor, Lacter was a regular commentator on radio station KPCC and also published in Los Angeles magazine. In 2005, he was named by the Society of Professional Journalists as Distinguished Journalist of the Year
Although Lacter would often infuriate Frying Pan News readers with his swipes at unions, he also railed against developers who were manipulating the government’s EB-5 visa program and, more notably, against the outlandish inequality between Los Angeles’ haves and have-nots. To the end Lacter believed in an economic system that allowed those workers on its lowest rungs to climb up to the middle class.
“We’re not just talking about an opportunity to be a dishwasher,” he told KPPC’s Steve Julian. “We’re talking about the chance to buy a house, to have your kids go to college — opportunities that only happen if the job market is a lot more robust than it is right now.”

-
Striking BackJuly 30, 2025
Private Equity in Hospice Care Spurs Workers to Strike
-
Column - State of InequalityJuly 24, 2025
Reform Refill: Has Scott Wiener Convinced Gov. Newsom to Rein in Prescription Middlemen?
-
Striking BackJuly 18, 2025
Ford-Owned Battery Plant Drags Heels on Union Vote
-
The SlickJuly 21, 2025
On the Navajo Nation, the List of Mystery Wells Continues to Grow
-
Featured VideoJuly 18, 2025
Skater Kid: Behind the Viral Video and Continued Fight for Justice
-
Column - State of InequalityJuly 17, 2025
Trump and Kennedy Throw Head Start Into Reverse
-
Column - State of InequalityAugust 7, 2025
Health Care CEO Warns of a System on the Brink
-
Latest NewsJuly 23, 2025
How Robert Reich Teaches — and Why Inequality Is Still the Lesson