"Milk your cow more and feed it less"

In Russian we have an idiom that translates to English literally as

• To get more milk from your cow and spend less on food, you should feed your cow less and milk it more.

It's usually used sarcastically. Are there any similar idioms in English?

It's often used in job context when talking about poor management. In other words, I'd formulate this idiom as "Be as selfish and cruel as possible, even if it harms your own interests".

Not a literal translation, but a saying that describes a similar situation is:

"The beatings will continue until morale improves."

The expression describes a captain/boss who will be cruel to his subordinates until they improve their efforts, even though the cruelty will probably make the problem worse. (More on the origins of this phrase.)

Assuming Nikita's 2nd interpretation is what is meant, the nearest English equivalent I can think of is to have your cake and eat it - a really ridiculous statement on the surface (of course if you've got some cake you would expect to eat it, wouldn't you???). But what it means is, you can't still possess your cake and eat it as well. Once it is eaten it is gone. So it is used of a person who unfairly wants both sides of the bargain, ie get more milk form the cow but not spend more on food.

Is this statement used as in:

It is good to maximize the profit ?

Or

is it meant as in try to be as selfish as you can and use others ?

There is a Dutch saying that goes:

"Voor een dubbeltje op de eerste rang willen zitten......."

that translates as:

"to want the very best seat in the front row but only want to spend 10 cents"

(old fashioned money so it means not euro but guilder cents - the value is about 5% of that of 1,-- euro)

The Dutch use this saying when people do not want to pay the right price for something or if you ask way too much compared to what you are willing to give That could also be the time that your willing to put into a project, the amount of effort that you are willing to put into something. So it is used when someone is too demanding.

See Tom Au's answer (under-appreciated/voted in my opinion) to a question concerning the expression:

To milk it for all it's worth,

which means "to take all you can of value from something [exploit] while you have the chance to." (Linguaspectrum PLUS - British English Idioms)