You'll need to be strict with your definition of 'regular', as the offers from companies you really don't want them working for will flood in.

How about they have to live off the lowest provided level of food assistance, with the lowest level of provided health insurance, and they don’t get paid until after they’ve left office and their pay is determined by a public plebiscite?

Most state legislatures work under a similar model -- being a legislator is full time work for a couple months of the year, and the rest of the time, delegates/senators are expected to have other jobs. (This is "enforced" by legislator pay being something like ~$10K/year.)

It's not a perfect system. There are very few jobs that just let you take off a couple of months a year, so legislators tend to have specific careers. Constituent services are required year-round, so legislative staff are full-time, year-round employees. And legislating has to happen quickly, so it's harder for citizens to interact and follow along with the process when they want to advocate for a bill.

Remember the jet that went down over Iran a while back? People reading the articles were questioning why a Col was the isolated person. This is an example of this article's principle in action: If the bobs fly, they will have tacit knowledge about what's going on.

A few of the local politicians are also realtors. I couldn't imagine your run of the mill SWE job letting your employee take a 10 month break every year to be a politician on the side. Or are you imagining a corp that operates solely to give the politicians real work? Like you are a congress man part of the job is building walls for 2 months.

In the US, I think it would be great to have them do a service type job, and to keep a camera on them. Keep their government pay, but this will document what a real person they are, or are not.

Personally when I vote use the 'what job did you do' as a major criteria. Bottom to top: Politician (never a real job), Lawyer / lobbyist (practiced liar), Government employee or student or never worked (never facing market economy impacts), college professor, ex con - then a big gap - Used car salesman (hard working but a bad reputation), other sales

Top for someone I vote for is Farmer, then any hourly worker that does a job I would not want to do, or physically cannot.

Even better: what if we made achieving elected office a felony offense punishable by life in prison with no parole? This would remove legislator’s motivation to use their power to accumulate personal wealth, as they could enjoy none of it. It’s found that their family benefited disproportionately, the family has to serve jail time as well.

My guess is that a few true believers would be willing to serve prison time in order to achieve a moral good. But the stakes would dissuade grifters.