There's a guy I met recently that had just moved to Chiang Mai from Da Nang because of visa reasons. He told me many other people feel the same way. He is doing an education visa here and he gets up to 4 years from that. But he has to actually study and pass the classes at a university, not some silly private language school that doesn't actually have a curriculum.
20k dollars seems like a lot! The retirement visa here in Thailand does something similar: A person has to put 800,000 Baht, which is around $25,000 into a savings account and not touch it. They are apparently entitled to take that money back out if they decide they no longer want to retire in Thailand.
IF things continue this way these might be the only viable long-term solutions for visas in the area.