People who consciously use the Political Power mechanic - what do you do with it?

Is it just a background thing that makes different playstyles viable? Like authoritarians don't need to care about slave opinions, and very little about workers, so you can allocate more consumer goods to research instead of pop upkeep?

I've played both egalitarian and authoritarian builds and haven't really noticed the difference economically, except from taking slaves in wars, allowing some of my worker pops to move up to specialist roles. Improving working conditions drains consumer goods a bit, but haven't seen much increase in planet output?