I think I'm with your boomer dad on that, though. Screws are increasingly cheaper and shoddier than they use to be, and probably because of the materials used are light and easy to produce. Now, the boomers blame "them dang cheap Chinese screws" but we all know it's enshittification for the sake of profit (which I guess can and would include globalization of supply chains).

Your dad is right. I never used to strip out Robertson deck screws. Now, if you're lucky enough to get a screw in, the chances of getting it out unstripped approaches nil. If I search around and find good brands like Richileu, I don't have that problem. The shit Chinesium screws at Home Depot today are horrendous.

i'd believe it to be honest, problem is phillips is still shit. You put ANY torque into them, you're gonna need to put a LOT of back pressure on them. Which is the primary reason they tend to strip anyway, inadequate back pressure, causing the bit to slip, getting a purchase on the fragile little corners, and then fucking DELETING them from existence.

I am old enough to remember when they only had manual screw drivers and thicker wood screws that needed to be pre-drilled and lubed with soap.

Go buy a modern "cheap" wood screw. Not a deck screw. An actual wood screw. Pre-drill the correct size hole, including the countersink, and use the correct size manual Phillips screwdriver. You will never strip out the screws.

Now take a 500 RPM impact driver that has almost enough torque to remove lug nuts, a worn or wrong size bit, and a thin shank screw that was only designed to hold down deck boards and the slightest slip or misalignment and have this photo.

We all do it because it is fast/easy. Just understand that you are doing things the convenient way instead of the right way, and you have to expect the stuff to sometimes not work aa advertised because of it.

I'm a millennial, I don't really recall phillips screws getting universally worse over my lifetime. I've torn the drive out of a LOT of them over the last three decades.

What I have seen is Phillips holding still while the rest of screwology improves around them. Take an impact driver and blast in a few 3.5" #10 Torx deck screws, then try to install a Phillips head screw and see if you can keep the word "bullshit" from coming out of your mouth.

There's also the issues of Pozidriv and JIS, which both superficially resemble Phillips but are different and work VERY poorly if turned with a Phillips driver.

Home appliance enshittification is real though. I'm running my Kenmore 80 series for as long as I can.