Our childhood experiences have made us what we are.
Us is the direct object.
What we are is the object complement. It complements or "completes" the direct object.
Yes, what we are is a noun phrase.
An object complement can be a noun, noun phrase, pronoun, or adjective.
Verbs such as make and create, and those such as name, call, and label often have object complements.
I named my daughter.
I named my daughter Alice.
The other students called April smart.
Josephine painted her elephant pink.
We elected Obama president.
The cats considered the dry food poison.
The witness called everything he saw a complete mess.
What distinguishes the direct object from the object complement?
The direct object takes the action of the verb. It comes before any object complement. To identify the direct object of a sentence, find the verb and ask "verb what?" or "verb who?" See this page.
Everything in bold is a direct object.
The object complement comes after the direct object. The words in italics are object complements.
Note that the order of words can change which noun is the direct object and which is the object complement. D.O. comes first.
I called my daughter Alice.
I called who?
I called my daughter. DO is my daughter.
Alice is OC.
I called Alice my daughter.
I called who?
I called Alice. DO is Alice.
my daughter is OC.
The city planners considered the plan amazing beyond belief.
Josephine found the homework she had done lying in the trash can.
Josephine found what?
the homework she had done is D.O. lying in the trash can is object complement.
Our childhood experiences have made us what we are.
Made who?
Made us (direct object)
what we are is object complement.
This page has more examples.
The construction you’re using is idiomatic, although “basic” isn’t a word I’d expect to hear in that context in American English. However, the phrase elides some words that are implied by the statement. When one says “You pay tax at the basic rate,” what’s really meant is something like:
You pay [a/the] tax [on something] at the standard/required rate [to the cashier or taxing authority].
In this case, the payee is the cashier or taxing authority, not the thing being purchased. I think the advice could be clearer, as it’s true that “tax” is neither the payee nor the object you’re buying, but “pay tax” or “pay a/the toll” are certainly phrases an American English speaker like myself would say in the right context.
In other words, you pay tax on/for something, or to someone. In comparison, phrases like “I pay clothes” or “I pay lunch” would sound very odd to a native speaker.
Best Answer
This is a catenative construction in which "Jim" is direct object of "want" (and the 'understood' subject of the subordinate "write" clause". The catenative complement of "want" is "to write a letter to the mayor", not "Jim to write a letter to the mayor", for the latter is not a constituent, but a sequence of direct object + complement.
The fact that we can’t passivise is a lexical property of "want": there are a fair number of exceptions to passivisation (cf. "John would like them to help him", but not *"Them to help him would be liked by John"!)
"Jim" is called a raised object: the verb that "Jim" relates to syntactically is higher in the constituent structure than the one it relates to semantically.