WellFair - The Socialist Bill Splitter app for iPhone and iPad

Wellfair is a bill splitter for the socially conscious - split your bills based on how rich people are, rather than how much they ate. Sounds crazy, but give it a try and you may be surprised by the results.

When youre in a restaurant and the bill comes, theres basically only two options: either you can split the bill evenly between everyone who ate, and poor George who only had a salad and a glass of tap water feels resentful towards John who had the steak and a pint. Or you can all sit there and laboriously work out how much everyone owes individually, and everyone can put in their money and find it doesnt reach the total even though everyone definitely put in enough money, or overpaid if anything.

Well, we suggest a new way. Less painful than paying for individual food, fairer, in a strange sort of way than splitting it evenly: Socialist bill splitting

This is how it works:

You enter the bill total into Wellfair, and then everyone enters their salary. Wellfair is completely secure. Once youve entered your salary no one can find it out and it doesnt send it from the device (if youre bothered about that sort of thing). You can put the device into flightmode if you dont trust us.

Wellfair then calculates everyones individual share, not based on how much they ate, but how rich they are. The richer pay more, the poorer pay less. Excellent!

Hang on!

But what about poor George who only had a salad and a glass of tap water? How is this fair for him?

Well, this is the point. The world isnt fair. "Poor old George", as you like to call him, actually works at his Dads solicitors firm, and earns £85,000 a year. Even though he doesnt really know much about law and doesnt work very hard (he left work early, for example, to come to this meal!). John, on the other hand, struggles on £12,000 a year as a trainee sound engineer, even though he works much harder than George and also looks after cats with depression in his spare time. Hes a really nice guy. How is it fair that he has to pay more, not only in real terms but a much higher percentage of his income for a meal?

But what about the steak?

See, were going for overall fairness here, trying to even out the unfairness inherent in the world. Yes, John may have eaten more, but then George still lives at home, so he gets as much steak as he wants for free anyway from his parents live in chef (they really are disgustingly rich). The purpose of Wellfair isnt to make it so that everyone pays for what they had, but pays a fair share of what they have for the evening.

Okay... but still why is this such a good idea?

We all know inequality is a bad thing, but its extremely hard to fix across the country. With Wellfair, you can start enacting your own sphere on equality within your own social group. After all, youre at the restaurant with these guys. They should be your friends (were not suggesting using this with a bunch of strangers). And the benefit of a meal out isnt just the food, its spending time with your friends and having fun, so why not split the cost of that so the richer pay more?

Whats more, once youve run the calculations, even if you dont decide to split the bill in this new, fairer way, those of you with higher bills will start to realise how privledged you are. Its easy to forget sometimes, and worth remembering how lucky we all are

Okay, okay. So this will make the world a better place. But I dont eat out much.

Wellfair actually works for any shared costs - flat sharing, bills, anything where a group of people have to share a cost.

What if we all have the same salary?

Due to the magic of maths, Wellfair will still work, its just it will split the bill evenly across everyone.