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Nobody becomes a member of Congress for the salary. 
Their incentive structure is in the Constitution, it's keeping their job if their constituents like how they're doing.
No. Most politicians have a lot of travel and housing expenses that aren’t accounted for in stipends. Lowering their salary will further ensure that only the independently wealthy can serve in office as the salary is a mere drop in the bucket for them. What we need to do is overturn Citizens United as another commenter mentioned. >

Honestly, I think there are times when we need reps to make unpopular decisions that are in the long term public interest.  
It’s a really bad idea in my mind to put more weight on following the whims of public approval. >

No. Politicians are generally not driven by their compensation. Many are independently wealthy or expect to make money in careers after politics. >

I've long thought it would be interesting to see what happens if we did something like raise pay for Congressmen, Senators, and senior executive officials to something like $3-5M a year in hopes of drawing more Fortune 100 SVP type of executives into legislating. Many of them are the most competent managers and problem solvers in the country, but aren't interested in taking a 90%+ pay cut out of some sense of civic duty. If they were able to be more successful in solving problems and budgeting than the current crop of politicians, the investment would be well worth it. >

We would have a better run government, which is why the gop always wants to cut pay. >

I don’t think this would survive a legal challenge in the United States to begin with.
Functionally, I’d be interested and hearing how it’d be structured. Would each politician get their base pay and then bonuses based on certain approval rating benchmarks?
There are a few issues I see with this. Different polling outlets come with different approval ratings. Deciding on which polling company and the method in which they do so would probably be nearly impossible. 
Also when would you get paid based on your approval. Is it your approval rating at the end of your term what counts and you get a check based on that? Is it a monthly aggregate approval?
This would also lead to more polarized congressional districts. No one would want to run in competitive districts because your approval is destined to be lower than in deep red or blue districts. If you’re in a competitive district where no party really gets above 50-55% of the vote you’re locked into a lower pay than a district where it’s 80% democrat or republican. >

Until Citizens United is overturned and campaign finance reform created there is no way this could really work. That’s before getting to the relative value of approval ratings. >

I think you're wholly right that campaign finance reform is really the key towards rebalancing the representation of influence away from money in politics and back towards the will of the people.
Could you think of any ways to influence the political discussion to make it a key issue for discussion in upcoming elections? Like could petitions with enough signatures gain traction to capture & invigorate a spotlight in national politicial discourse? I know it's not a new issue but how do we make it the IT issue? >

Right now the issue is the Republican court. And I think that’ll be a massive issue in 2024. Sadly, there’s nothing that can be done on the campaign finance front until the court is fixed. Ditto issues like gerrymandering and representation. Our democracy is pretty broken right now. >

The compensation they receive from their overlords is far more valuable to them. >

Yeah. Stop political donations and congressional stock trading and suddenly you've got a congress with very different priorities. 
There's no Iraq War if Raython, Boeing etc aren't making political donations and expecting a return on their purchase. >

Most politicians are independently wealthy and would not be affected by changing representative compensation.