I'll second the Gerber knives (although I've never used the paraframe). For the price, they're decent quality, I actually prefer them over my spydercos because they're lighter and more versatile. They don't have tree-felling power of some of the more tactical knives, but most of the time I'm just using them for light duty cutting where a smaller, thinner blade is more useful.

Personally, I've started going cheaper and smaller on all my knives. For me, It seems like after a certain price point, you're really not getting a much better cutting implement for the extra money. A $300 knife will not cut 10X better than a $30 knife, and for most people who aren't knife enthusiast, they probably will not know the difference.

I do recommend having one really good quality knife for your main knife, but unless you have a lot of extra cash laying around, buying multiple $100+ knives that will most likely spend it's whole life collecting dust in an emergency kit seems like a waste of money. That is money you could be putting to better use somewhere else. I'll even go as far as to say for that purpose, just get the most inexpensive (but decent) knife that will fulfill your needs. I'm not saying get a $3 pocket knife, but I think you could probably find a lot of decent choices in $30 price range that you're looking at.