The lives of many poor people today are much worse than they were fifty years ago. This is especially true in regards to the poor who live in the inner city, were the economics of drug trafficking has made human life cheap. Women continue to make much less than men do for the same type of work, and most professional women are well aware that glass ceilings still exist. Of course these types of matters pale into insignificance when compared to the barrage of sadistic violence committed by men against women every second of every day in this country. Recent developments regarding affirmative action policy, along with their general economic underdevelopment as a class, illustrate that the black community has for the most part still not overcome.
Racism is also still alive and well as witnessed by the current rise in violent hate crimes.
Machiavelli's ideas are very much relevant in the world of power politics as it currently exists. Justice in the real world rarely exists in a pure, distilled form. As much as we would like to see the history of democracy as a living example of justice winning out over expediency, the reality of the situation is at the very least not as clear cut as your argument tries to make it out to be. If we lift our eyes beyond the machinations of civil government and focus upon the business world, we see an arena in which Machiavelli is even more applicable. No one would mistake a corporation for a democracy and many believe that it is in the best interests of society for businesses to act in their own self-interest.