How do labels facilitate reasoning in this context? If a politician, for example, says that universal basic income would empower poorer people to become larger contributors to the economy thus having a strong ROI while raising quality of life (all of this is hypothetical I don't care to debate UBI here) - I'm lost on how knowing whether this is a left vs right policy is beneficial to anyone trying to decide if this is useful policy.

You put your finger at an important point there. When applied to a single policy, labels can indeed get in the way of reasoned discussion of the policy. I think the labels are more useful as applied to the entirety of someone's political outlook.

But if we were to apply labels to UBI, I imagine that the left would mostly be in favour, and the right would mostly be against it. Ideally, everyone should consider the notion on its merits. It's just that what way you're leaning, will inevitably influence your thinking to some extent.

Edited to add: To be more concrete, consider two possible effects of UBI: (1) Raising the quality of life of poor people, and (2) Discouraging people from seeking work. I imagine that a right-wing thinker will weigh (2) more heavily than (1), while a left-wing thinker will do the opposite. Each may even say that the other outcome is not even going to happen, or only negligibly so.

I think you're arguing my point for me here! If we don't immediately try to label something with simplistic labels people would be forced to reason about the policy based on merits rather than labels (or just not consider it at all, which I contend is entirely better than making decisions based on tribal labels)

You do have some valid points, but presently we seem to be talking past each other, so I think I'll let the matter drop for now. But thanks for giving me something to mull over.

thanks for the engagement and respect - always feels great to take the opposite position against a respectful individual

Likewise. This is hacker news. We do not want it otherwise here. Or anywhere else, for that matter.